


Good God, Let Me Give You My Life

by buckyno



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky generally being a badass lost puppy, Bucky isn't empty, Hydra, Multi, Murder, Non-Consensual Touching, One-Sided Relationship, Rape, Steve/Bucky is Endgame, Unbeta'd, Unreliable Narrator, matter of fact he's mostly pissed off ALL the time, non-con, people with the worst intentions and people with the best intentions, pulls some things from the captain America: civil war trailer (loosely), referenced animal cruelty, time jumps, warnings will be changed if needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:51:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyno/pseuds/buckyno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5+1 meme, five people over the decades who fell in love with the Winter Soldier and died because of him and the one person the Winter Soldier loved and lived because of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ivan Alenkov – 1961

**Chapter One**

Ivan Alenkov – 1961

_Soviet Russia_

 

It was called a fortress. At least that’s what it translated into in English as. The Kremlin, the heart of the Motherland. Ivan Alenkov knew better. A heart should not have so many eyes and ears. Some of those eyes and ears belonged to his comrades in the Soviet Party, but many, too many, of the others were placed there by the Americans or the American’s sniveling allies. He personally hated the affront of allowing their enemies to listen in but his military mind could appreciate the advantage of controlling what information passed hands. Even with her violated walls Alenkov preferred the Kremlin than anywhere else in Moscow, particularly this time of year when the city was cold and grey and the long queues of darkly wrapped old woman waiting for their shit rations obstructed the better views. The Kremlin still had that old world sense of beauty, the sense of beauty that reminded him of the opulence of the czars while still representing the power of the USSR.

His rooms were not exactly private, no place was private inside the Kremlin, but they were his own in every other way that mattered. Alenkov stopped briefly to examine himself in the mirror that took up most of the wall space above the sink in his bathroom. He smoothed his short beard, his salt and pepper hair, and the nonexistent wrinkles from his uniform. He straightened the medals that proudly decorated his chest. Alenkov was a good ten years older than his face would suggest betrayed only by the lack of color in his hair and the deep crow’s feet around his dark eyes. Old enough to garner much respect within the party and young enough to be extremely annoyed by the prospect of needing protection. But, he sighed to himself, two assassination attempts…that could not be ignored. His country’s enemies did not like the idea of him coming into any more power. Soon Alenkov would have a damning say in international affairs and worse yet he was popular among local and foreign powers. He was more valuable now than ever before. So, yes, he would accept the protection. It was a compliment really, especially considering with who he was told they were sending to guard him.

The Winter Soldier, his own personal guard. That could be the origin of his uncharacteristic nervousness. He knew very little about the Soldier, only what those above him knew and even they hadn’t much to offer beyond a bloody reputation. He’d heard the Soldier was loyal to a fault though and that was all that mattered to him. Alenkov moved to a plush high-backed chair to make an attempt at waiting patiently, his escort was supposedly going to appear any second to take him to his estate. Minutes stretched into hours and soon enough he found himself dipping into an old fashioned ink well with a barely used pen to idly sketch the swooping swirls and reaching petals of the carved frames around the portraits of the nation’s prominent leaders. Another forty minutes would pass before an abrupt knocking on the door disturbed him from the meditative state created by steadily filling his parchment with black bleeding lines.

“Enter.”

The doorway was darkened by a pair of tall nearly identical wispy young men stuffed into suits not tailored to them, “Comrade Alenkov, we’re here to escort you to your car, sir.” Their accents had strange lilts to them but any reservations he had were quelled when the two simultaneously lifted their lapels revealing matching silver pins, a smiling skull surrounded by wickedly curling tentacles.

“Ah.” He said. Alenkov supposed he was expected to Hail Hydra them but he didn’t. He didn’t consider himself Hydra, more Hydra adjacent. He was willing to work with them and he was well connected, that made him rather vital to their operations in Russia. Instead of clicking his heels together and saluting he merely made a rolling gesture indicating them to lead the way. Down staircases and twisting grand hallways, the pair moved liked they’d been through those halls a thousand times before despite the fact Alenkov had never seen them there before. A long black car was waiting for him just outside the Kremlin’s steps. One of his escorts rounded the car to the driver’s side while the other held the door to the back seat open for him.

Before Alenkov leaned in the man at his side said, “Comrade, you’ll be escorted by another individual from here on out. We’ll still serve as your drivers until such time we are no longer needed…Don’t speak to him, sir.”At that he was pushed in and the door was shut harshly behind him.

The sudden rude treatment had Alenkov’s teeth on edge. He breathed out, letting go of the pride that could’ve gotten a man dead in battle along with his long exhale of breath. Lack of situational awareness could have done that just as well. Realizing the mistake he made Alenkov was a bit in shock when he registered he was not alone. In his defense the figure shadowed in the corner of the parallel passenger seat was impossibly still, impossibly silent. Alenkov felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. His eyes glanced to the black glass separating them from the view of the driver and his partner, he knew they were listening and decided to take the advice given to him and not speak with the Soldier. He could feel it in his bones too, knew with the certainty of the changing seasons he was looking , well, at least the silhouette, of the Winter Soldier himself. The weak light that filtered through the tinted windows did nothing to illuminate the Soldier, Alenkov couldn’t help but to try to see as much as he could anyway. He stared, unapologetically.

Alenkov lit a cigarette, holding the flame long enough to catch grey-blue eyes and dark brown hair that stopped short to frame almost delicate cheekbones. Alenkov forgot for one embarrassing moment to actually smoke his cigarette. Those grey-blue eyes had been staring straight back at him like the Soldier wanted to flay him alive. He’d thought the long ride out of the city would’ve been easier if he’d got a good look at his knew guard but he’d been wrong. Alenkov felt like he was at the unfortunate end of a sniper’s scope, and foolish as it was, he couldn’t bring himself to stop looking. He’d vented his window just a crack for the smoke to escape. More light swept in from the fading evening sky shadowing the hardline of the Soldier’s jaw and deepening the frown around his pretty red lips. Pretty wasn’t the right word for the Soldier, Alenkov decided, beautiful, fierce even, a storm in the form of a man. He coughed but couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged on his mouth. Alenkov, keeping his smile, nodded to the Soldier and settled his back against the seat prepared for ride ahead of them.

The Alenkov family home wasn’t so much as an Alenkov family home as it was Ivan Alenkov’s family home, singular. Once upon a time the great house and surrounding sparse woodland belonged to a prestigious noble family and ,well, the revolution hadn’t treated prestigious noble families very kindly. At least not those who didn’t support the new regime, all that money had to come from somewhere after all. The old family’s name had been stripped from the property but someone had allowed the house to keep its grandeur. Alenkov appreciated it. He appreciated fine things in general, beautiful things. Which was without a doubt the reason his eyes raked over the Soldier’s body the moment they’d stepped out onto his own driveway less than an hour later. The Soldier was dressed in black military fatigues cinched tight here and there by various buckles and straps securing God knew what. His only weapons seemed to be twin handguns strapped to his thighs but Alenkov knew better to limit his assumptions to what the Soldier carried only by what could be seen. The Soldier was tall and lithe, striking in every way a person could be and in a few ways that weren’t very human at all. When they were in the car Alenkov thought the low barely-there whirring noise was coming from the vehicle itself but his stoic driving duo and cut the engine and Alenkov realized the sound was coming from the Soldier.

Before his curiosity could get the better of him one of the previous escorts appeared to face the Soldier and barked, “Perimeter Check.”

The constant scowl on the Soldier’s face didn’t let up the slightest bit yet he started to saunter toward Alenkov’s door anyway. He followed his orders but didn’t look particularly happy about it. Perhaps, Alenkov wondered, it was because this was not the Soldier’s usual type of assignment. The rumors spoke of over kilometer-long shots and quiet knives in the dark, not being a politician’s personal babysitter. He could understand the Soldier’s resentment. A scant minute passed before a soft voice sounded behind him nearly making him jump.

“Clear.”

The driver nodded curtly, “Take Comrade Alenkov inside, stay within mission perimeters.”

That seemed enough for the Soldier who turned his cold gaze directly at Alenkov, his expression remained the same yet somehow the young man exuded impatience. Alenkov shot him a wry smile and turned on his heel leading them up the expansive driveway. Alenkov didn’t expect to be greeted by yet another suited man behind his door, standing in his foyer as if he’d been there all his life. This one had a definitely better-fitting suit, thick pure white hair, and pair of unfashionable round glasses. The man had made himself at home swirling cold vodka in a crystal tumbler, smiling wide, he could be your best friend or a rarely seen but affectionate family member. He wasn’t.

“Ah, Comrade Alenkov. I apologize for the theatrics. But the threat on your life is very real. And when it comes to Hydra’s protection there are a few…let’s call them conditions. I’m here personally to explain to you how this all works.”

Alenkov felt the Soldier’s presence behind his back and tensed, refusing to move he replied, “I see.”

“Good, very good. First of all we want to you know your friendship is very important to us. Important enough to warrant the best protection we are able to provide. We will expect to be repaid for that at a later date for now, Comrade, the Soldier is at your disposal. He will follow any direct orders you give him that are not at odds with his original directives. But it is best if you address him on a minimal basis. At any rate he’s hardly good company,” he tipped his vodka toward the Soldier as if that illustrated his point, “He will stay with you but myself and my agents outside will depart. Obviously it’s best our organization not be associated with you no matter how meagerly, you understand yes?”

“Of course, _Comrade_ …?”

“Ah, how rude of me, you may call me Kurtashkin, though it’s hardly of importance now. Until the matter is resolved the Soldier will be your shadow wherever you go,” the and by proxy so will we went unsaid, “otherwise handle your proceedings normally.”

Alenkov very pointedly didn’t scoff, “He’s to follow me around? The man is hardly the type to go easily overlooked.”

“The Solider will blend in Comrade, do not be concerned about that. Now I must take my leave. We will contact you soon. Until then, Comrade Alenkov.” Kurtashkin held out his hand. Alenkov shook it feeling faintly uneasy but was still strangely flushed with a sort of pride. He’s importance was being validated.

The days of value on the battlefield were over but Alenkov still strove for that singular recognition. Make the Motherland proud. He couldn’t help it, it had been bred into him as much as anyone else of his generation. There was nothing wrong with pride as long as it served the party. Kurtashkin whispered something in the Soldier’s ear before leaving, patting his back with a gentle smile. Alenkov bit back on the streak of jealously that ran through him. Never mind the look of pure hatred the Soldier sent toward Kurtashkin’s retreating back. Kurtashkin had left his glass to sweat on a 17th century writing desk. The door shut with click that sounded too loud.

Alenkov stared at the Soldier because he could not settle on what to say and eventually opened with, “I thought you would be older.” Which was the truth.

The Soldier held his gaze but said nothing. He’d been asked no direct questions and so had no direct answers. Alenkov frowned and tried something else, “Pick up that glass would you, and follow me.”

He we walked into his living area without looking back and expected the Soldier to have not moved but then he heard the sound of glass gentle scraping of wood and purposeful footfalls like the Soldier wanted to be heard. The Soldier had followed his command, of course it was relatively simple command but that almost made it all the better. That he could order the Soldier to do such as small thing gave him a rush of power when the Soldier finally rounded the corner into the room it also gave him a twinge of guilt. The Soldier was holding the crystal like it was a land mine, slightly away from his body and very very gingerly.

“Set it on the table there.” Belatedly he added, “Thank you.”

Alenkov peered around and noticed a distinct lack of activity. Two people staffed the large estate though that number was hardly adequate he relied heavily upon them for the upkeep of his house doing the things he couldn’t be bothered with. He hadn’t been home himself in two weeks and the place looked decidedly unlived in, there was even a fine dust visible on everything that normally would gleam and shine.

“Where’s my staff?” He asked the Soldier half expecting him not to know and half expecting him to say they were in very small pieces somewhere in the woods.

The Soldier worked his jaw with a grimace, “Security risks.” His words were as soft as before but weren’t said without effort. Alenkov got the impression the Soldier wasn’t used to talking.

“Are they dead?” Because that would be more than a shame.

“No.” Is all he gets from the Soldier. Such a small word and it felt so hard-earned.

Alenkov didn’t prompt him any further. He told the Soldier to do…whatever it was he was supposed to do and that he would be upstairs in his study filing reports and approving a week’s worth of committee changes. Everything had a damned committee. The Soldier didn’t give him any kind of affirmative but he did disappear the moment Alenkov turned his back to him. All was quiet for some time. He’d signed his name for the last time a couple of hours after sundown and rather than give his hands a rest Alenkov stretched and took out a leather bound thick sketchbook half full of drawings. Drawing was therapeutic for him but by no means did he consider himself an artist, he’d seen real art and knew exactly where he measured up, in other words not at all. Of course he didn’t notice the dark shadow watching him from the corner of the room nor did he notice the Soldier ever entering the room. Alenkov thought it was kind of rude to not knock or anything though he figured the Soldier was told he had full reign over the house and the intent way the Soldier was watching his hand made him loathe to say anything to break the moment. He liked the Soldier watching him with something other than thinly veiled annoyance. There was a small line between the Soldier’s brow that could have been annoyance, sure, but to Alenkov it was something more akin to confusion. Alenkov’s position meant he had to be good at reading people and the Soldier was hardly an open book he could still zero-in on the little the Soldier gave him. Alenkov kept drawing, somewhere along the line he’d began to outline the basic shape of the Soldier’s eyes but stopped himself before it came too clear what his hands were trying to do. The next time he looked up again from the page the Soldier was gone again.

The rest of the weekend followed the same pattern. The Soldier would be mostly out of sight until Alenkov put pencil to paper then he would stand in the darkest place in the room and watch him work. On the night before he was set to return to the Kremlin Alenkov asked, “You do sleep yes? Eat and all that?” Because he’d been fixing his own meals and eating them very much alone, nothing was ever out of place in his kitchens to prove another person had been around. The guest rooms had not been slept in. The Soldier could be cleaning up after himself of course but he doubted it.

“I’m fully functional.” Replied the Soldier from his dark corner. Wherever the dark was the Soldier gravitated to it.

“That’s not what I asked.” Said Alenkov, he didn’t stop drawing finding the Soldier was more forthcoming that way. Which was to say the tiniest bit more talkative than normal so not much.

There was a pause and then a repeat of, “I’m functional.”

“Are you saying you haven’t been eating or sleeping?”

“It’s not necessary.” Alenkov stopped. Nice things should be taken care of. That was just common sense. “I beg to differ. I mean, you are human are you not?”

Another long pause, “No. I’m not.”

Before Alenkov could feel anything about the answer the Soldier was swiftly walking out of the study as if it were the obvious response and had better things to do. The sinking sensation in his gut told him to stop, that to become invested in the Soldier would be fruitless. He’d never pursued something that would get him nothing in return. Behind his desire to have the Soldier’s attention, to touch him, to draw his features over and over, there was the lurking sick thought that he could have all those things—he just had to make it an order. That didn’t sit well with Alenkov who earned his position in life through patience and hard work. With patience in mind Alenkov did implement a few orders. Small things, he had the Soldier sit with him during dinner. The Soldier wouldn’t go beyond sipping at the water given to him and eating more than a single piece of bread but it gave Alenkov a pleasant buzz of satisfaction. Second he asked the Soldier, phrased as an order, to respond when he talked to him. That one felt a little petty but it was just him and the Soldier. He learned the Soldier spent most of his time on the roof, patrolling the 360 degree view the vantage point allowed him. The Soldier also relayed to him under no uncertain terms was Alenkov permitted to stay in the city after his business days were concluded. When they were in the city the Soldier was nowhere to be seen, Alenkov never doubted the Soldier couldn’t see him though. It was a hassle considering he normally stayed in his rooms in the Kremlin on weekdays but the Soldier gave him no room to argue. He’d simply dumped the information that the security risks were too high then vanished back to the roof. Somewhat frustrating, yes. Nearly four days had passed and still no contact from Hydra, just the Soldier’s cold calm presence. That in itself was a sort of balm if not a whole different kind of frustrating.

On the fifth night the Soldier reminded Alenkov why he was there. They were in his study, the Soldier watching him prepare a canvas with white paint when he went from leaning against the wall calm-as-you-please to suddenly rigid. His eyes went to the one arched window in the room before waiting a beat then moving with efficient grace to the exit while uttering a tense “Stay here” to his charge.

Alenkov felt his skin crawl with his fight or flight instinct that had been previously laid dormant by a life behind a desk. The threat had almost been easy to push to the fringes of his mind with the Soldier at his back. It was the effect the Soldier had, Hydra must’ve felt invincible. What felt like an eternity before he heard the shot ring out. Alenkov’s nerves steeled and he ran to the roof without much thought as to why. He was about to shamble through one of the tiny windows out of the attic that were more for decorative purposes on the outside when the Soldier slipped in like a shadow in front of him with a high-powered rifle strapped to his back.

He looked perplexed and his eyes tracked every twitch Alenkov made, “Threat eliminated.”

“Right…good man, good man.” Alenkov grabbed the Soldier’s forearm and gave him a firm pat on the shoulder.

He didn’t compute what he had done until he let go, afraid the Soldier would dislocate his jaw. The Soldier did nothing. He didn’t even flinch at the sudden need to touch. That meant something, Alenkov didn’t feel it all that important to him to suss-out what.

Alenkov asked, “I don’t suppose that was the last of them?”

The Soldier peered at him the waxing moon lighting pale strips on his face through the open window, “No.”

“Has Hydra told you anything yet? About putting a final end to all this? I highly doubt they’ll lend you to me on a permanent basis to fend off attackers every few days.”

“No.”

“…Am I safe for tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Come, let’s a have a drink then.” Not a suggestion. The Soldier followed Alenkov to the master bedroom which was quite possibly the largest room in the house with its own fire place and full bath. The chairs nearest the fireplace weren’t that comfortable but they looked nice and felt throne-like. Alenkov poured two tumblers of vodka and sat them on the small table between the two chairs, “Drink.”

The Soldier knocked back the alcohol in one gulp without the barest grimace, he could have been drinking water. Alenkov chuckled drinking less than half of his own then starting a small flame himself finishing his drink when the job was done. He hadn’t had to start his own fire since he retired from the military. Alenkov refilled his own glass but left the Soldier’s alone. He’d cut himself off at two being an adamant believer in moderation at least when it came to drinking.

“You’re going to get some sleep tonight, Soldier. I have clothes you can wear, less tactical more beneficial to actual comfort.” If anyone deserved a reprieve it was the Soldier, the man just saved his life. He knew the Soldier wouldn’t close his eyes for more than a half a second unless he was told to.

Alenkov finished the last drops of his vodka and lead the Soldier into a grand walk-in closet full of fine suits and polished shoes. On the far wall he kept heavy house robes next to folded loose-fitting silk pants. He chose a deep red velvet robe embroidered in gold with a pair of black pants, Alenkov admitted they were among his nicer things if not a little small on him around the waist. The Soldier looked on impassively—the order to sleep and the need for different clothing not quite registering. Alenkov laid the chosen garments on top of the duvet of his four-post bed.

Sensing some conflict Alenkov tried to explain further, “I won’t be turning in for some time yet so, please, I insist: sleep. You’re supposed to be my protector and you need to be well-rested.”

The Soldier glanced to the clothes on the bed but didn’t move.

Alenkov swallowed, “Put down the rifle, Soldier.”

The Soldier did so. Bolder Alenkov moved forward to unlatch one of the many straps keeping the Soldier trapped in his uniform and miracles of all miracles the Soldier actually let him. Under the cold gaze of the Soldier Alenkov kept going until he was pushing back a mess of black cloth and leather slowly revealing smooth pale skin and more surprisingly gleaming metal. The metal arm was emitting the softest of whirs, the plates that seemed to form the arm went from slightly flared to flat.

“My god…” Alenkov traced the raised scars where the metal met flesh with a shaky finger and for the first time the Soldier flinched. “You are beautiful.”

Alenkov pulled away quickly, afraid for a moment what the Soldier could do with that arm if he was so inclined. He grabbed the robe and held it out to the Soldier who took it with a sad cautiousness. The Soldier clutched the velvet then slowly rubbed it between his flesh and blood fingers. Alenkov watched the Soldier’s face lit by fire shift from apprehension to a subtle awe. He’d never felt more possessive over another person in his life. Next Alenkov handed over the pants which received the same revered treatment as the robe. The Soldier acted like he’d never touched either fabric before. That wasn’t so unusual if a person had grown up in a rural area though it was unusual for someone who Alenkov knew for a fact traveled the world over. The robe broadened the Soldier’s shoulders, gave him the noble bearing his face could easily supply on its own if he would push back his hair.

“Change into these.” Alenkov indicated the pants, “Then lie here, sleep. I’ll wake you soon I promise.”

The Soldier had zero qualms about stripping in front of the other man. Somewhat to Alenkov’s credit, at least he thought so, he looked away until black silk was tugged up low on the Soldier’s hips. At the bed the Soldier hesitated, he shot a look over his shoulder at Alenkov for confirmation. Alenkov nodded, only then did the Soldier stiffly climb into the bed. He laid down flat and motionless strapped tightly to an invisible board, his eyes were shut too hard.

Alenkov retrieved a spare rarely used sketchbook from a nightstand then angled his seat by the fireplace just right so he could comfortably draw his new favorite subject. Three hours wasted away before Alenkov really believed the Soldier had fallen asleep. The scowl was gone, the lines created by tightened eyes were smoothed out leaving an incredibly youthful face unmarred by constant vigilance nor low-simmering rage at everything. So young, Alenkov was struck again how someone who looked like that was also the mythical Winter Soldier. He didn’t look like he needed a gun in his hands and a mission, he looked like he needed someone to take care of him.

As promised Alenkov woke the Soldier when he was finally able to relax enough to go to sleep himself. By then it was nearly dawn and the Soldier seemed eager to return to his sniper’s nest. Despite his urge to leave he was still very delicate about returning the clothes lent to him. Alenkov saw to it that the next nights were spent similarly continuing on without a single word from Hydra. The Soldier would watch him draw with his peculiar intensity, they would share a meal and Alenkov would order the Soldier to at least nap. Alenkov dug into his wardrobe for his finest things and began to add ornate jewelry Alenkov had previously scarcely looked at. He draped gold and jewels around the Soldier’s neck, rings on the Soldier’s flesh hand, and let the Soldier scrape his fingertips down expensive skins, silks, furs, everything Alenkov had available. The first time Alenkov let his hand glide down the Soldier’s neck it was accidental, the second time it was not.

They’d reached the end of the week together when Alenkov became what he knew Hydra would call overly curious. It started with another innocuous question. “What’s your name?” Alenkov knew straight off it was the wrong thing to ask.

The Soldier’s eyes went dull and he squared himself into a parade rest, “A weapon has no name, sir.”

Alenkov narrowed his eyes over a page covered in pastels depicting the sunset from the study window, “ No, I suppose they don’t. A soldier is a weapon, that is true, but they still have names.”

“A weapon has no name.”

“And you’re just a weapon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Last I checked a gun couldn’t frown. A gun doesn’t like to watch someone draw. Why do you like watching me draw by the way?”

A lined formed between the Soldier’s brow, “I don’t…know.”

“Hm, isn’t that interesting, not very gun-like at all.”

Alenkov expected the Soldier to run to his nest but instead the Soldier stared at him, his wide, and maybe even scared, “Is this a test?”

Alenkov scrubbed his beard, “I’m not sure what you mean, Soldier. I want you to know I want you working for me. I’d thought that decision was yours but I am starting to understand that’s not true. Would you like that? To work just for me?” He had the money, the resources, he was certain he could buy one assassin from Hydra if he could make it worth their while. Or maybe they would make the Winter Soldier more readily available to him. All he knew was that _he wanted_.

The Soldier did make a hasty retreat at that question. In not answering Alenkov he was disobeying a direct order he’s been given, Alenkov didn’t realize that because to him when people became uncomfortable or angry they left the situation. That’s what a person did, that wasn’t what a weapon did. The Soldier didn’t return to sleep, Alenkov’s hands itched. He almost waited up for him but felt like a fool the moment the thought went across his mind. He understood that he cared too much. Alenkov didn’t care about caring too much though and when he wanted to own something there hasn’t been a force on Earth for over a decade that could stand in his way. Money and power did more than open doors, they obliterated them to smoking ash. Love could do that too. That version of love that caused men to bruise and women to burn, that brand of love was the only kind Ivan Alenkov was really familiar with. His last thoughts drifting into dream were of the Soldier’s face and the way the prospect of the Soldier leaving made him want to grip him tight until he could see his fingerprints in that pale skin.

The morning was warm. Stifling under the weight of the blankets. Smoke lingered in the air, Alenkov recognized the smell of a well-made cigar. He managed to not scramble out of bed rather he raised himself with some semblance of dignity. He saw the Soldier first, Kurtashkin sat next to him in Alenkov’s chair along with that damned cigar dangling from his fingers carelessly. The Soldier was at attention in full tactical gear, his beloved rifle secured on his back.

“A man comes into another man’s home, uninvited, twice, without any forewarning, some might call that rude Comrade Kurtashkin.” Alenkov sounded bitter and defensive to his own ears. All the political maneuvering in the world didn’t matter when he first woke up in the morning.

Kurtashin’s chest heaved up and down like he was laughing but no sound came out, he smiled with too much teeth, “Good morning to you Comrade, and such a bright one it is. You’ll be happy to know the root of your problems has been dealt with. It saddens me to tell you the threat was coming from our own country. Such is the way of things these days. Sad but inevitable.”

“That is great news. I look forward to getting back into the swing of things.”

“I could only imagine.” Neither man moved save Alenkov to tighten his robe around him. He thought Kurtashkin would offer him another professional handshake some sort of thinly veiled threat and disappear until Hydra called on him so he was confused when Kurtashkin relaxed into the chair further taking another long leisurely drag of his cigar. “Did you have any problems with the Soldier?”

Alenkov blinked, “Absolutely not, he was beyond exceptional in every capacity. In fact I have a propo—”

“Even better news! I’m the handler on most assignments but I always worry on the long ones. My fatherly nature I suppose. Hydra is like a family you see, bonded by blood and history. Both are so important.”

Heat rose beneath Alenkov’s skin, anger and panic whirling into clump of unease that made him spit out his words fast and furious, “I would like the Soldier to continue his services here. I’ll give anything in exchange to Hydra.”

Impossibly Kurtashkin’s smile grew wider like a snake about to unhinge his jaw, “Oh, I’m quite sure you would. Prettiest little weapon in our arsenal, deadliest as well, but I’m afraid the Soldier is worth more than you have to give, now or ever. He is the Fist of Hydra, he’s going cut our path into the future. Though that will mean nothing to you.”

“I fail to see how the future wouldn’t concern me, Comrade, considering the value of my cooperation with Hydra I would think it would be necessary to keep me happy. That can be assured by the Soldier’s presence.” Alenkov was tired and angry and so ready to hurl threats back at Kurtashkin’s smug face.

Kurtashkin stood flicking the remainder of his cigar into the small flickering fire still lit in the fireplace, “I meant that in general, dear Alenkov, the future will mean nothing to you in general. Yes you are valuable but not as valuable as the person who’s been working so hard to eliminate you and your obvious misplaced affection for the Soldier is disheartening. Deals are traded in for better deals, as I said: such is the way of things. We protected you until we found out you could be swapped for a much better chess piece. Why keep a knight protecting a pawn when the queen needs him more? Please don’t look so shocked Comrade your face isn’t really made for it. Worse yet I think you did some damage on our Soldier, he actually asked me why his orders changed from protect to kill. You can’t fathom how cumbersome the rehabilitation is going to be.”

“You’ll not touch him.” Alenkov growled.

Krutaskin sighed, “Gentleness does not breed loyalty, Comrade, that will be the last lesson this world will teach you. Soldier, shoot this man in the head.”

Alenkov should have chosen a direction and tried to run for it but all he did was look into the Soldier’s eyes and croak, “Please, don’t.”

Alenkov’s brains splattered across the bed, gruesome lumpy and red. His body didn’t drop immediately, his eyes blinked, then in all one movement what was left of Ivan Alenkov crumbled boneless to the floor.

“Hail Hydra.” Kurtashkin said. “Burn this gaudy piece of shit to the ground then head to the rendezvous for your debrief…well done, Soldier.”

The Winter Soldier waited for his handler to safely vacate the house before carrying out the last of his orders. He went to the study and gathered every single scrap of paper with his face on it. One by one the Soldier watched his face burn and curl into bright orange embers. The larger pieces he used to light the curtains and the bed sheets, he wasn’t sure why he was doing it that way, when he tried to focus on his reasoning his mind screamed at him. He didn’t have to think all he had to do was burn, make it look like Alenk—the target’s fire got out of hand in the night. Common in big old houses with winter at the door. The Soldier saved the clothes in the closet for last. He took no lingering touches, or last looks at the target’s remains. There wasn’t really anytime even if he decided to, the room was catching fast. The gentleness the target had given confused him. It still did. He was aware that pain would come because of it, he’d relayed everything Alenkov did back to his handlers. They weren’t happy at what he told them.

The Soldier left the house through the bedroom window and landed heavily on his feet, pain shot up his legs and into his back on impact. The ground groaned beneath him and he sighed. Pain wasn’t confusing, pain was order.


	2. Cassandra Masterson -1986

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback guys!

Good God, Let Me Give You My Life

Cassandra Masterson

1986, Appalachian Mountains

 

The sheer technological advancement of the lab was magical, decades ahead of anything floating around government facilities.  It had taken Cassandra years to get there, so much time proving herself to be loyal enough, intelligent enough, useful enough.  It was all done for the sake of science.  She would “Hail Hydra” all damn day long if it meant she got to see the latest DNA re-sequencing data or work with the new holographic interphases.  The other things Hydra was involved in…well, it was none of her business frankly.  She was aware willingness to close her eyes made her a not so great person but she honestly believed the scientific benefits would outweigh any bad Hydra was doing.  The work done in those labs could save the world one day, no more disease, anything was possible.

Cassandra was even perfectly content being isolated in the mountains of Appalachia hugging the Kentucky and West Virginian borders.  Her only family was a little sister in a private school all the way in London.  People use to say they looked alike, golden blonde hair and deep-set brown eyes but Cassandra was a good ten years older than her sister who was seventeen now.  Cassandra sent the school tuition every semester and made sure her sister had everything she needed but they didn’t really talk so much.  Even if she knew what to say Hydra had all her calls monitored and it was easier to just not reach out.  Five years ago their parents died from a potent strain on Malaria while they were busy playing saviors overseas rather than being parents to their children.  If Cassandra was bitter about that she believed she had a right, if Cassandra shared her parents apparent need to save the world she wouldn’t admit it and if she missed her sister her colleagues could never tell.  All in all she exuded the type Hydra wanted working under their banner.  Driven.  Focused.  Talented, and just this side of broken.

It was easy to forget who she worked for.  So easy.  Her co-workers were likeable, her quarters comfortable, and she quickly rose through ranks of her fellow scientists.  Not once in her tenure was she reminded of Hydra’s history or the supposed grand plan.  Her mother use to say people would only combat evil if it was right before them, if they didn’t see it it didn’t exist.  That was probably true and when she started to hear the whispers filtering around the base she realized the danger of living with her eyes shut. 

People were scared.  Her bosses would whisper frantically at each other in corners and the security around the base was on a steady increase.  Someone important was coming. Someone whose named turned the most stone-hard men she’d ever met white as a sheet.  They called him the Winter Soldier, Cassandra didn’t understand what that meant.  Some of the soldiers armed to the teeth at every entry and exit couldn’t hide their excitement.  She never talked to them and she wasn’t about to start over idle curiosity.  Cassandra focused on that, it was just idle curiosity and the only thing that mattered was her work.  Her outlook on that is changed abruptly when she was moved from developmental technologies to a multinational team she’d never met before.  They were meant to work on installing a chair.  The thing was a wonder in the most savage way.  It was meant to hold someone down, burn away their mind, and leave something more malleable behind.  Cassandra could tell that within minutes of working on the wretched thing.  The basic concrete room the chair was the center of was soon filled with machines lining the walls, power supplies she realized.  One area was clear and reserved for another hook-up she couldn’t fathom, whatever it was was big.

As they finished up the installation out of the corner of her eye Cassandra watched the commander of their base and a high ranking Hydra official speak amicably in a hushed language she didn’t understand.  Russian?  She was never any good at the Cyrillic languages.  The commander was all nods and smiles and fluttering eager hands, the other man dressed in a nice charcoal suit was much more subdued but apparently pleased enough.

The whispers of the Winter Soldier grew louder and louder until finally on an otherwise regular Sunday the base’s sirens sounded a lock down.  Cassandra was called in with the team to stand at the ready.  She still hadn’t made the connection until soldiers escorted the cryo chamber in surrounded by the fog unattached cooling nozzles created like some movie about the terrible future.  The chamber was huge but for all its size it seemed like a coffin to Cassandra.  The order was given to reattach the chamber to its new home immediately.  A small round was window was set into the metal on the front of the chamber but Cassandra couldn’t see through it, too frosted over with a quarter-inch thick of ice.  She brings a hand up to clear it but is caught in a grip harder and colder than the ice she was trying to force away.

“Careful, Miss…”  Cassandra stared into the face of the officer her boss had been all smiles with days earlier, his round spectacles  gave the hard noble lines of his face a more gentle look, “Masterson, we don’t want to cause the asset any undue distress.  I can’t imagine those fish like getting poked at through the glass of their tanks, I’m sure he would feel the same.”

Cassandra pulled away eyes wide and aware of the attention she was garnering, “There’s a person in there?”

“Oh, _no_.  The greatest weapon Hydra possesses is in there.  You and your highly skilled team are here to insure the reawakening process goes smoothly.”  The officer smiles at her beneficially and addresses the entire team of scientists, “You will be briefed shortly, please connect the chamber quickly as possible.”  He turns on his shiny black heel and clacks away with military precision. 

The team including Cassandra, especially Cassandra, scramble to do as their ordered.  The gears of the hoses are tightened with stock-car team speed, if anybody’s hands were shaking no one said anything.  No one could put a finger on why their panic crept up on them.  It could have been the officer’s voice, something in it slithered around you and tried to strangle you if you breathed too deeply.  The soldiers who escorted the chamber were silent sentinels save one young man with jet black hair and mean curve to the smile he was sporting.  He was amused, Cassandra sent a scathing glare towards him that accomplished nothing but make the soldier’s smirk grow just a fraction more.

“Rumlow,” barked a man with silver streaks in his hair and enough ordinance attached to his black vest to level a city block, “Get your ass with Delta, clear out the plane.  We’re gonna be here for the long haul.”

“Yessir.”  The young soldier dropped the smile and disappeared through the loading doors but not before giving the chamber a once-over with calculating eyes and a disappointed frown.

“Sorry for that, Miss Masterson,” said the older soldier, “the boy’s green as hell and a mite too excited about seeing the Winter Soldier in action himself.  Over half these guys have been hearing ghost stories about him their whole careers.”

Cassandra felt a cold sweep through her, “The asset…and the Winter Soldier are one in the same?”

“Right as rain, Miss Masterson.  If their pulling this guy out of deep freeze something big is going down.  Not gossip just fact.  Strange they moved him to the States, though, they had a whole team in Europe around the clock. I would’ve thought it’d be easier to keep him there and just recruit a new team.”

Cassandra glanced around to her own team, the hook-up was done now they were just quietly mumbling to each other and double checking their work.  Like meek little mice she thought with a fire in her belly, angry she’d been acting that way too.

“Thank you,” she took note of the chevrons on the man’s shoulders, “Sergeant.”

“Not a problem, you looked like you had some questions you didn’t want to ask, I get that.  Just try not to ask too many too often.”  He smiled, “Now that you’re all done when need to get everybody up to the war room.  Or whatever you call it here.”  The sergeant was more laid back than any of the other military at the base and honestly it was refreshing.  She followed him out with the team but couldn’t help glancing back at the chamber.  The chamber used to put a man in cryo stasis only to be taken out for missions.  The thought made something in her roil and she realized her eyes had just been forced open just a crack wider.

Wrong, wrong wrong echoed in her mind.  She knew little about the cryo stasis only that it was an extremely painful process for the subject which was apparently what half the briefing was about.  A small old man with an accented voice gave the run-down of the process.  Their team was to be the new permanent caretakers of the “Asset” while he was active which could be up to a year this time if all went as planned.  What happened to the old team from Europe was not discussed and she was not supposed to ask, so she didn’t.

The thawing was going to start tomorrow, the impish little doctor said it would take only a few hours.  That was wrong too.  Something like that was supposed to be gradual so as to not shock the system but they apparently weren’t worried about that.  They didn’t refer to the soldier inside the chamber as human at all, so it would make sense they would proceed as if he weren’t.  Cassandra started to doubt.  Maybe the asset, that’s what the Sergeant called him right, wasn’t human.  She’d seen the reports, done some research herself all the way to Erskine’s model super soldier, Steve Rogers.  The asset could be enhanced, or maybe some type of advanced machine.  She’d seen the research on that too, at the time she’d believed Hydra was a decade or two away from a passable weaponized robot but she could be wrong.  It was a lot easier to entertain the notions that the asset wasn’t a person, doing so let her sleep better at night.  But it would only be one night.

The next morning the base was buzzing with chatter and energy.  Soldiers and scientists alike gave her curious glances as she walked past them while the rest of her team followed close behind.  The steel automatic doors that led to the Winter Soldier’s custom made lab required a thumb print and a retinal scan of every single member of the team.  To Cassandra’s ire Rumlow was on their security detail today but then again the entire squad that escorted the chamber there was present.  They all had a hyper-focused look to their faces, save Rumlow who seemed to never lose that minuscule smirk which was leveled solely at Cassandra.  He made her skin crawl.

She didn’t quite understand the soldiers’ presence.  She got that they needed to transport a valuable asset of Hydra but not why they were there now.  Were they in danger?  Why would an asset be a danger unless…the asset wasn’t a volunteer like every other agent and scientist she’d met.  For some reason the thought had never occurred to her, that some of the people she saw every day weren’t there of their own volition.

The thoughts of the asset not really being a person was thrown out the window and burnt to ashes when they finally cracked open the chamber.  Cassandra was momentarily engulfed in chemical-smelling fog and a blast of cold so intense it hurt her throat.  Like the rest of her team she was ready to disconnect the asset from the chamber as soon as the fog cleared but when it did she couldn’t get her hands to move.  His skin had a slight blueish tint to it, frost was gathered on his eyelashes and gave his lips an ethereal shine, the metal arm he had attached to him framed by cruel scars was untouched by the cold.  The asset looked like just a boy to her.  Too young for the horror he was surrounded by.  The other scientists’ eyes were wide like hers too but what was shock theirs held excitement or hunger, a few—out and out fear.  All of the soldiers held their guns pointed toward the motionless Winter Soldier.

The Hydra officer who Cassandra had hence learned name was Kurtashkin stood above them on an overhanging balcony, he smiled wide and rolled his hand, “Proceed.”

Cassandra swallowed against the bile that threatened to rise in her throat and helped the assorted scientists and doctors pick the Winter Soldier’s hefty weight out of his coffin and onto a metal table to be brought back to life.  She felt like Dr. Frankenstien. Everything up to this point with her work had been all hypothetical except for some intensive work on some secretive complicated hardware.  Hardware that made the Soldier’s arm seem familiar she realized with a chill and suddenly Cassandra knew why she was on the team.

Ports were already in the Soldier’s skin to receive the excessive amount of metabolic cocktail designed to kick start the soldier from the inside, warming him and elevating his heartbeat while on the outside Cassandra and the team worked to coil heating pads around his arm, legs, and torso.  His head was set on a device that looked a bit like a sponge pillow with electrodes sticking out the sides to be secured to the Soldier’s temples.

Excitedly one her colleagues, the only other woman on the team by the name of McRaney, says, “In five years or so we could be able to do all this in-chamber. Adjust the temperature variations to make room for heat and provide it, then this process could be instantaneous, could you imagine?”

Cassandra bit her tongue.  Instantaneous, yes relatively speaking, but excruciating.  She took note of the interested glint in Kurtashkin’s eyes and wanted to bludgeon McRaney.  The thaw took exactly three hours just as the little nameless doctor predicted and nothing could have prepared Cassandra for when the Soldier became conscious, not that those responsible for them being there in the first place had bothered.  The Soldier’s eyes fluttered open as if he’d been out for a long nap not for God know’s how long.  Grey-blue eyes stared blankly as the ceiling and a small gasp smelling of chemicals came out of his mouth.  Kurtashkin from him perch above them began speaking in loud, clear Russian.  Cassandra didn’t know what he said to the Soldier but it was the same phrase over and over.  The security around them was tense, even Rumlow’s infuriating face had an edge she’d never seen before.  The Soldier blinked slowly, his eyes gaining some spark of awareness.  Those eyes cataloged the security force first, then the scientists, and lastly landed on Kurtashkin.  Being looked at by him had felt like being pinned down by an invisible force, causing fear to spike up Cassandra’s spine and she finally understood why the others had told ghost stories.

Kurtashkin kept speaking for a long time until twenty or minutes later he addressed the Cassandra’s team which had not moved a muscle since the Soldier woke, “Take the ports out, remove the heating coils, get him to the chair.”

The Soldier’s lips twitched down, just a fraction, barely noticeable but Cassandra had been watching.  He didn’t move as the scientists puttered around him nervously even when the ports where cut from his skin by trembling hands.  After the obligatory first looks the Soldier never looks at them again.  It was almost shocking how impersonal the whole thing was.  He let them move him wherever they needed to like a doll.  He wasn’t relaxed though, Cassandra could feel him under her hands.  Pulled tight, tense, in pain maybe but doing a hell of a good job of not looking like it.  The ugly ragged holes where the ports where had already stopped bleeding, the wounds were healing before her eyes slowly but faster than any human she’d ever seen.  Watching his skin weave back together was disturbing and she had to look away.  Techs came with damps cloths to wipe away any remaining residue from the chamber off his skin and that the Soldier’s face flickered with annoyance.  He tracks their movements without turning his head and glares openly at them, the tech’s stutter—the color draining from their faces.  Kurtashkin says the Russian phrase again and it drags the Soldier’s attention to him.  All emotion from the Soldier is gone and the tech’s finish their task in record time.

Cassandra says, “We need you to stand up.”  The Soldier doesn’t look at her but does what she asks a thudding heartbeat later.  They move him to the chair, check his vitals one more time and strap him in.  After that Kurtashkin orders almost everyone in the room to leave.  Only a few more seasoned soldiers stay and the little doctor from before reappears with the Sergeant on his left, he hands the taller man a thin file.  Cassandra is one of the people asked to leave, the doctor says offhand not allowing her the respect of talking to her face that she will be needed again soon to “calibrate the weapon.”  She and the rest of the team are ushered out by the soldiers who weren’t allowed to stay either, Rumlow was one of them.  The look on his face was thunderous.  He brushes past Cassandra, harshly knocking her shoulder as he went.

Cassandra glimpses back behind her as the steel doors shut, her last look is of the doctor putting a bite guard in the Soldier’s mouth and whispering something with a pleased little smile.  The doors seal and Cassandra waits a whole ten seconds before running into the bathrooms to throw up.

When she’s called back in an hour later the Soldier seems the same, but not.  He still stares a head at nothing but the pupils in his eyes are dilated, his hair looks greasier liked he’d just ran twenty miles.  They give her the specs to his arm and she gets to work with the calibrations.  Up close and personal Cassandra knows now why the doctor had called the arm a weapon, this thing was no prosthetic it was created solely to hurt, destroy, rend any material she could think of apart.  Her heart broke for the Winter Soldier but her head feared him.

“Sorry about kicking y’all out,” the Sergeant said from behind her, “but you know how it is.  The asset’s missions are classified.

The easy conversational tone of his voice that previously put her at ease now sets her teeth on edge.  Cassandra hums at him and pretends to be enthralled in her work.  Which she sort of was.  She _did_ recognize the tech in front of her, they’d been training her this whole time and she didn’t even know, it was the same hardware they had her was working on months ago.  It was frightening to think about.  Suddenly everything was frightening to think about.  She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips and see the sweat that still gave the Soldier an odd sheen, heat radiated off of his skin.  He’d gone from frozen to burning with a fever in a matter of hours, Cassandra’s field was not medicine but she knew those extremes should have killed the Soldier.  She had to repeat that to herself when she looked at him.  The Winter Soldier, the whispered assassinations, the Fist of Hydra, because if she didn’t the next time she glanced at the Soldier’s face she would see a young man.  A kid.  No, a killer.  Cassandra cursed herself, cursed Hydra, shoved it all aside and finish the calibration quickly.

The moment she’s done the good Sergeant graciously kicks her out again.  The next time she lays her eyes on the Winter Soldier days later he’s dressed in black, slim-fitting body armor meant for stealth with a sniper’s rifle strapped to his back leading a team of similarly dressed soldiers to the helipad above the base.  His eyes focused, jaw set, and a frown tugs his features down.  He’s an intimidating sight.  The Soldier moves past without a glance.  His walk his confident and graceful and the other soldiers look confident walking behind them the way army guys do trailing behind a tank.  Untouchable.

She spots Rumlow furiously checking over his gear at the gate, he’s not going with them.  He looks like he’s taken personal offense that he’s not.  The slight pout he sports makes him look his age but no less full of poison.  He notices her and sneers.  Cassandra turns away on her heel and buries herself in work.  That always worked.  She was able to focus at the problem at hand and push out any outside influence.  If Rumlow passes by like a shark in the water she doesn’t take note and it’s all too easy to pretend everything was as it was before.  Her illusions were crushed when the Winter Soldier busted back through the doors twelve hours later, the kind of furious that made Rumlow’s anger look like a growly puppy and drenched in blood.  About half of the soldiers that went out with him followed him closely awe in their eyes, the other half lagged back a little.  They were pale and too rigid, strung-out on what they saw out there.  Cassandra wants to ask what happened and she also doesn’t want to know at all.  With that much Blood, blood only the Soldier was covered in, there were a lot of bodies somewhere.  Bodies Cassandra and everyone who facilitated the Winter Soldier were responsible for just as much if not more than that damned metal arm.  No amount of hypothetical power source theories was going to be able to take her mind off this again.

The Sergeant and the doctor order the team into the lab were they’re faced with the Winter Soldier pacing back and forth like those animals in the zoos.  Elegant, predatorily, and sad despite the gore.

“Relax,” the Sergeant tells them, “he’s just winding himself down.  Get the chair ready, prep the chems.” 

The Soldier stops to get stripped and hosed down in the far corner of the lab with a drain that for some stupid reason Cassandra thought was for contamination showers.  Every pair of hands to touch him no matter how briefly are glared at, every now and then he bares his teeth giving the caged animal image more weight.  How would the world change, Cassandra wondered, if the Winter Soldier was let loose free upon it.  The water that slews of him is so dark red its almost black and the water steams and leaves slightly reddened skin behind.  Too hot. The heat at the very least does something to calm the Soldier, he leans into it instead of away.  It made sense, considering the amount of time the Soldier was rumored to spend in cryo.  Decades, decades of icy hell and that water must have felt like heaven.  They roughly dry him off, put him a pair of black briefs and he’s pushed back into the chair again.

Cassandra hooks up the arm safely to the machine, she tries to be careful but not too careful to catch suspicion from her superiors.  He’s pumped full of drugs and again afterwards Cassandra doesn’t see the Soldier until his next mission.  The doctor flittered about happily a week later because the soldier was having, thus far, no adverse reactions to being out of cryo for so long.  Cassandra became a model employee agreeing and nodding, taking notes.  When she insists to mix the chems herself no one argues.  Every time she hooks the Soldier into the chair and whispers “I’m sorry” so low it was impossible for a human to hear no one notices. 

Cassandra can’t put a name to the force that made change the chems, ever so slightly, she’d done a secret work-up of the solutions the moment they let her touch them.  She’d thought they’d been pain-relievers of some kind, to take the edge off and make the Soldier more pliable.  The reality was so much worse.  A great deal of the components was a mix of anti-psychotics and steroids.  Anti-psychotics tended to have the contrary effect for someone who inherently wasn’t but she couldn’t say the Soldier was either.  She also found traces of methamphetamines and so many tranquilizers she wasn’t sure how the Soldier was standing much less dealing with the toxic mess running through him.  She weans him of the methamphetamines first, she replaces it with a compound that was essentially sugar and caffeine that could pass under an unscrupulous eye.  There’s no change in the way the Soldier behaves and Cassandra’s both relieved and disappointed in that. 

She takes one more step further and lowers the amount of anti-psychotics in the Soldier’s cocktail.  That appears to have no effect until one day, a half a month into the Soldier’s tour of consciousness Cassandra whispers her apologies to the Soldier instead of staring straight forward like every time before he turns his head a tiny fraction and looks her directly in the eyes.  His cold blue eyes are clear, taking her in but there is also a sense of loss there.  She’s so shocked she jumps back, drawing too much attention to herself by dropping her tablet on the floor.  All of the eyes in the room are on her but when she retrieves the tablet and looks back the Soldier’s are not.

“Oh, sorry, static shock.”  Cassandra explains lamely. 

She’s glad Kurtashkin wasn’t hovering like some sort of Roman emperor from the balcony that day, he would have seen the look.  Everyone seemed to accept her excuse and went on with their duties.  With that single look Cassandra made a decision. Her whole life had been about making the world a better place.  The greater good, always about the greater good and where had that gotten her?  How many lives has she saved?  What had Hydra done with her work while her eyes stayed closed?  Whose blood was on the money she sent to her little sister every month?  She felt like she was plunged deep underwater holding her breath ready to break the surface.  Cassandra was going to drag the Solider from those depths with her.  There was a person inside him, she saw it for one second and that was enough.

Cassandra was aware what the chair did.  Knew it wouldn’t allow the Soldier to remember her, not exactly, but the Soldier had to remember some things otherwise he wouldn’t be able to function in the field.  He recognized Kurtashkin and the little doctor so he had to have some sort of familiarity there.  The very tentative plan was to strengthen that familiarity between her and the Soldier, hope the Soldier didn’t snap her neck while she did and figure out a way to covertly tinker with the chair.  The Soldier needed his memory. 

She started with a touch.  Whenever she worked on the Soldier’s arm and after she apologized, Cassandra placed a hand on his shoulder very gently and without pressure.  She felt the muscle tense there and kept tinkering with the arm only removing her hand when she was done.  Then Cassandra figured out it was literally impossible to change the chair in any helpful manner.  There were no lower settings or higher ones, the power flow was very strict and she couldn’t move the power anywhere else.  What she could do was make it stop working all together and make it look like an accident.  Cassandra subtly set the chair up for failure piece by piece at every calibration.  She kept whispering to the Solider, kept placing a careful hand on his shoulder and she also continued to replace his chems with less harmful substances.  Cassandra resigned herself to the long road and reminded herself that while she was helping the Soldier she still shouldn’t get too attached.  The Soldier made that hard.  Really, it was her subconscious that made that hard.  She would never, ever do anything, ever, but that didn’t stop her mind from going places it really shouldn’t.  The passing days didn’t make things any easier. Not when the Soldier had begun to throw her odd, confused little looks every time he saw her.  Those looks never lasted long but Cassandra counted them as wins and treasured each and every one.

The first time Cassandra hears the Soldier speak she doesn’t understand him.  She leans in to whisper her usually “I’m sorry” but before she can get the words out he says, “Ya znayu.”  His voice is harsh, spoken in the same low whisper she always used and it gives her chills.  She looks it up later and finds out the words mean “I know.” In Russian.

Cassandra gets more careful from there.  If Kurtashkin had been there when the Soldier spoke she shuddered to think what would have happened.  The best case scenario she was removed from the Soldier’s team.  The worst…if she thought about the worst Cassandra found it made it difficult to fall asleep at night.  Her rooms there on the base were hardly homey to begin with.  The Soldier doesn’t speak again and it seems purposeful, he looks like he wants to, not just to her.  The days Kurtashkin stands vigil the Soldier definitely looks like he has words he’d like to say to him.  He doesn’t, then he glances at Cassandra as if to say, “Calm down, I won’t do anything to put you in danger.”  Cassandra might have been more poetic about what he meant but he still got his point across. 

The day after the chair breaks down.  The little doctor is absolutely irate.  Kurtashkin lacks his usual toothy smile he put on.  The Soldier was needed out on a mission and when he got back they needed to get that chair working.  Cassandra knew that chair would never work again.  When they did maintenance on it she’d set it up to overheat the main power unit inside, every time they used it on the Soldier the chair slowly destroyed itself.  What a shame.  As it stood they were going to build a new chair from the remaining parts.  The doctor wanted days, they all knew it would take weeks no matter how hard they cracked the whip.  The Soldier still had to go out, Kurtashkin had no choice, Cassandra could tell he was not the one to make the decision to send the Soldier out anyway. Kurtaskin appeared a little unsettled by the prospect, Cassandra kind of wanted to take a picture.

“Up the asset’s chems, double the security team on him.  Don’t leave his side tomorrow Sergeant.”  Kurtashkin rattles out irritably.

“Of course, sir.”

“Ms. Masterson, complete the arm calibrations.  I want you and your team here full-time fixing this.”

“Yes,sir.”

Kurtashkin clicks away with the doctor and the entire room lets go of a collective breath.

One of Cassandra’s team mutters, “So their routine is interrupted, what’s the worst that could happen?  Delays must have occurred before.”

The Sergeant doesn’t berate them, he does shrug and say, “Delays have happened.  Why do you think none of the asset’s science team traveled with us from Europe?  I’m not trying to scare any of you, I’m just being straight.  You all need to get to work.”  He turns to the Soldier, “Report to barracks, Soldier.”

The Soldier didn’t sleep much, when he did it was only a few hours every couple of days in the “barracks”, which Cassandra knew was not the same barracks the other soldiers slept in when their shifts were over.  She didn’t know where they put him but she imagined somewhere hard and cold.

The Soldier’s next mission went perfectly, as far as Cassandra could discern, nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  The problem Cassandra faced now was that every person in the lab was looking for changes in the Soldier.  The up in chems did nothing because he was basically getting a shot of caffeinated sugar right into the blood stream which compared to what he was getting before  was like drinking water after whiskey.  With the Soldier’s metabolism he would be processing the new mix out within the hour.  He was almost entirely off drugs and wasn’t receiving the “benefits” of the chair anymore yet he appeared to be the same.  Less pale maybe, eyes more clear but still frozen over apathy was all anyone could see in his face.  Cassandra had expected more, wanted more but didn’t know what that would mean.  She was terrified all the time, paranoid and quieter than usual.  She saw the Soldier every day now to be present to administer the drugs and run diagnostics on him between rebuilding the chair and sleeping.  Most of her meals came out of the vending machines in the common rooms.  She wondered what they fed the Soldier and figured she probably really didn’t want to know that either.

Days passed, with no change in the Soldier people relaxed though the new chair was far from complete.  The little doctor seemed particularly pleased and mumbled something about “Programming” and how its “apparent strength was setting precedents.”  Kurtashkin was less impressed and all the more watchful.  Kurtashkin raised his voice more often, only spoke to the Soldier in Russian and ordered the Sergeant to do the same.  He told the team to not talk in front of him unless absolutely necessary.  Kurtashkin acted like a man standing on a glass floor, that floor was codenamed the Winter Soldier.

 The cracks Kurtashkin was so driven to find appeared after the Soldier came back from a mission.  Blood was splattered across the Soldier’s face, arterial spray, he stood in the middle of the lab as usual as they turned the water on.  Cassandra stood by the doors waiting to look at the arm while the rest of the team was focused on the chair repair. The Soldier would have been stripped and under the water by now but he hadn’t moved.  He stood there silent, staring at nothing.

Kurtashkin flicked hand, “Sergeant, move the asset.  We don’t have all day.”

“Sergeant…” the Soldier’s soft voice had a questioning quality.  Cassandra couldn’t breathe.  The Soldier had an accent and it wasn’t Russian, he was American.  The Soldier was American. His mouth formed silent words and he looked too much like he was in some sort of pain. 

Cassandra took quick steps forward then stopped wanting to do anything to help but knowing she would give herself away if she did. All work had stopped with her.  Fearful gazez darted back and forth between the blood covered soldier and Kurtashkin above them.  Sharp as a razor’s edge Kurtashkin roared, “Tranq him, now!”

The Sergeant quickly took an odd-looking gun from a side holster and fired causing the jumpier scientists to hit the floor covering their heads.  The Soldier caught the dart the gun fired between two metal fingers, he glowered at it then crushed the dart in his hand tossing it idly to the side.  Kurtashkin practically screamed the now familiar Russian phrase at him, repeated it over and over and the Soldier just stared him.  Furious, confused.  The Sergeant smashed an emergency lock down button by the doors trapping them all inside.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”  Kurtashkin was gripping the metal bars of his balcony far too tightly.

“Protocol, sir!”

“I will tell you what the protocol is Sergeant!”

The Soldier’s attention sharpened on the word, he says it again to himself, “Sergeant…one…oh-seventh.”  He cards fingers through his hair and harshly grips it tight then he zero-ins on Cassandra.  He frowns, looks down at the blood covering the leather strapped over his chest for a few minutes and then it takes it off.  The Soldier strips down the rest of the way and goes to stand under the hot shower head like he’d previously been ordered.  The frown smoothed itself away after long minutes under the water.  Kurtashkin snaps the waiting frightened people with towels at the ready to scrub him.  They all look like they’d rather stick their fingers in a light socket but there was no disobeying Hydra.

The Soldier is changed into fresh black fatigues just like always. He sits in the chair and holds his arm out ready for the next part.  Cassandra glances at Kurtashkin who nods impatiently.    The Soldier watches her intently and the whole room watches him just the same.  All Cassandra could think was how much he didn’t belong there in that hell of a lab.  He was strength and beauty and sorrow, he deserved so much better.  She doesn’t say she’s sorry but she hoped by now he knows, understands.  She doesn’t touch him either, the Soldier glances at her hands then opens his mouth then shuts it.  He looks away from her that awful blankness beginning to slip over him.  To prevent it Cassandra rests her hand on him, she doesn’t care what would happened she just didn’t want _that_ to happen.  Not when they almost there at the surface.  The Soldier snaps back, stays focused and calm.  Cassandra took out the removable panels of his arm and checked over the circuitry.  Nothing was knocked loose from the combat and nothing needing tweaking.  She checks the mobility of the arm through a series tests and is done within minutes.

Kurtashkin and the Sergeant are giving similar suspicious looks.  Cassandra can feel something building like a wave.  Kurtashkin in a controlled authoritative voice says, “Well this will not do.  Put him back in cryo until the chair is finished.”

“No!”  Cassandra claps her hands over her mouth in pure shock.  She’d never regretted one word so much and alternately had never meant it so vehemently.  Kurtashkin did not look surprised.

“I see…Ms. Masterson, I’m disappointed.  I had such high hopes for you.”  Kurtashkin says he looks to the Sergeant and orders, “Shoot her.”

Cassandra see’s the Sergeant reach for the P90 all the soldiers on the base had slung over their shoulders.  It was an automatic and overkill for one small woman.  A woman who had chatted with him pleasantly enough for months but the Sergeant doesn’t look too bothered about it, and wasn’t that a bitch?  Cassandra closes her eyes tight, there’s nowhere to run and hopes getting shot to death wouldn’t hurt too much.  Maybe her self-sacrificing parents did pass something along to her after all.  The sound of rounds going off make her ears ring, the sound hurts then feels like holding her head underwater but she’s not shot.  Black smoking holes mar the floor in front of her, maybe three feet away, the Soldier had the Sergeant in a standing arm lock.  The Sergeant’s weapon is on the floor and the Soldier had the Sergeant’s own belt knife pressed against his jugular.  The Soldier considers the Sergeant for a moment, Kurtashkin is yelling his precious trigger phrase to no avail, then he jerks the blade into the Sergeant’s neck.  The sound of the sergeant gurgling blood is the only sound in the room for a second before the screaming starts.  Scientists scatter, Cassandra would almost find it funny if her heart hadn’t been hammering so hard in her chest.  One scientist, a short stout older man who had kept entirely to himself, was brave enough to run around the Soldier and get to the emergency button panel, he releases the door and runs.  Cassandra looks up to Kurtashkin and finds him gone.

In another blink the soldier is face to face with her, he grabs her hand and exits the way of the scientists.  Cassandra gapes and pulls out of his grip, he jerks back and glares at her but Cassandra isn’t having it, “Wait!  What are you doing?!  They’re going to kill you!”

The Soldier doesn’t say anything, why she’s surprised by that she didn’t know.  “Do you even know why you’re doing this?”

The Soldier cants his head to the side and deliberates, eventually he settles on, “Nyet.”

The base goes dark and everything switches to the dull red glow of emergency lighting.  Alarms blare all around them, they sound like guttural drawn-out screams.   The Soldier grabs Cassandra’s hand again a bit roughly and starts pulling her along with him.  He knows where he’s going.  A team lead by Rumlow rounds a corner at the end of the hallway they were running down.  The Soldier shoves Cassandra down flat against the floor, there’s a grate there she hadn’t noticed and the soldier has it pulled out and them both in it before the security team sees them.  They’re crawling through the air vents when it occurs to Cassandra that the Soldier knew exactly what to do, where to go, and where they were heading when it was virtually impossible to tell anything in the cramped spaces they were climbing.  He’d mapped it out, maybe not planned anything but he had to have taken note.

  The Soldier never stops to check behind him, Cassandra keeps up fairly well.  Even if she is gasping for breath and shaking all over.  Sweat pools in the palms of her hands making the maneuvering around the metal vents tricky.  She doesn’t dare to talk, she already felt like her movements were making too much noise especially contrasted next to the Soldier who was completely silent.  He leads them through the sharp turns with ease and a concentrated look that betrayed how much effort he was really expending.  The Soldier is conflicted yet his movements never halt or waver.  Cassandra follows suit.

They have to slide down to the next vent.  The Soldier stops at it, listens, and then when he deems it safe he pushes it off the screws with only a couple of fingers.  Cassandra climbs out after him grateful to be able to breathe free air.  The two had arrived in the bases’ garage.  Its dark and none of the vehicles there were in working order, those were outside which would be great if they weren’t separated by two huge moving metal doors that weren’t controlled from there.  The Soldier isn’t concerned.  He saunters up to the metal and proceeds to punch a hole through it, he grabs a piece with both hand and tears it like paper making a ragged hole big enough for them to get through.  He turns quickly and grabs Cassandra’s arm.

“Move faster.”

“Alright, alright, got it.”  He has her go first.  Her lab coat catches on the sharp edges of the makeshift door wasting precious time unwrapping herself from it.

The lights snap on in the garage just as the Soldier gets his last foot outside.  He pushes Cassandra forward and starts at a dead sprint.  The forest around the compound is thick and the terrain rocky.  Light from the afternoon sun blinds Cassandra for a second and she can’t see where’s running she only feels the hard press of a metal hand against her back.  Transition from concrete to soft earth is a shock to her feet at so fast a pace and she stumbles. She hears a loud cracking sound she thinks is a bone breaking and the Soldier catches her before she falls.  His eyes are wide a fearful.  Cassandra looks behind them for the first time.  Rumlow is standing at the gates, a sniper rifle similar to the one the Soldier favored in his hands.  He lowers the barrel and grins.  The bullet had went through Cassandra’s lung.  There was no fixing it.  She leans up placing a bloodied kiss to the Soldier’s cheek and begs the Soldier to run, leave her there and run, please, never come back.  He does.  Cassandra watches the white clouds move in the sky above them and hopes her parents would be proud.  She closes her eyes and never opens them again.

Three weeks later a Hydra strike team locate the Winter Soldier wandering the streets of Brooklyn.  His memory is in painful fragments and he doesn’t understand why he came to the city in the first place.  When Kurtashkin shows himself and speaks to him in soft gentle Russian, the Soldier just says, “I want to go home.”

Kurtashkin smiles, puts out his hand and replies, “I will take you home, Soldier.”

 

 

End

 

 


	3. John “Johnny” Martinez--Berlin, 1992

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was kind of thinking about X-files when I wrote this, except, you know, death…and no aliens or F.B.I. Okay, its nothing at all like the X-Files but I was thinking about the X-Files.  
> Also, thank you guys for your comments they’ve been appreciated (meaning I horde them like gold), let me know what y’all think about this chapter. I felt like it was a bit short and I’m not really happy with it but ended up posting it anyway.

 

John “Johnny” Martinez

Berlin, 1992

 

There is a difference between a fairytale and a legend.  A Fairytale always carried a lesson within, some sort of hard-fought for realization about the world that almost always ended with: the world is full of wolves and you should be wary.  Legends though, legends carried truth.  The amount of truth could vary of course but the building blocks were there and unshakable. The legend of the Winter Soldier was based on truth as concrete as any history book, Johnny Martinez was absolutely sure of that.  He’d dedicated the last fifteen years of his life to that, letting all else fall into the watercolor background of his life along with his career and an unhappy ex-wife back in Arizona.

It had all started a decade ago at a press junket for an up and coming politician inside a hockey stadium converted for the day.  Young and popular all across the polls the new guy had a good chance at winning governor, maybe someday even President.  Martinez was supposed to be sitting in the back row with the other less important journalists waiting for their chance to pose a prepared question.  Martinez was late, seven in the morning was early for him and that thought makes him laugh now considering how little sleep he works off of on a daily basis.  He remembers very few details about the day or the moments that lead up to his life changing forever.  He thinks maybe he should but he doesn’t.  Martinez recalls running into the junket late then snapping a hasty photo of the event from the steps of the stadium.  His finger clicks the capture button on his bulky camera the same time the gunshot rings out, so loud.  People scream, scatter, people always scream and scatter or they rage and gather.  Martinez did neither, he stood frozen in place and watched the hope of a new generation fall bloody into the arms of his brother.  That very same brother runs for governor a month later touting reform and honoring his brother’s memory—standing up against fear.  He wins by a landslide.  Years later he would be a Senator, Senator Stern.  No one bats an eye except a burned out journalist named Martinez.

Martinez only carried his suspicions with him because of that one photo he took of the event.  He gets it developed and is floored when he sees what he’s captured.  The shooter, he got the shooter, more or less.  In the crowd close to the podium stood the figure of a man with long brown hair stuffed beneath a ball cap with an American flag ironically stitched on it. The man had a tan jacket pulled tight around him and his arm is falling down mid-action, his fingers wrapped around a gun.  The damage is already done on stage.  The young politician is falling backward with a spot of savage red on the pristine white of his collared shirt.  His brother doesn’t look at his falling brother, no his eyes are directly on the shooter.  The tiny smile on the brother’s face was telling.  Martinez turned the photo over to his publishers, oddly they asked for the negatives. Naively he gave them over but not without keeping a copy of the photo for himself.  The publishers lose everything he hands into them, they publish nothing save on what a tragedy the whole incident was.  They tell him the photo wasn’t prevalent anyway and give him a shit assignment three states away with a send-off message that basically said do the work and get on with your life.  Bearing in mind these days he was living in a two-room flat in the cheapest part of Berlin it was pretty obvious how well that went over.

Weeks passed after the assassination before he noticed something strange about the shooter.  He’d thought it was part of the glove the shooter was wearing.  Black and silver, but he’d been wrong.  The shooter had a metal hand.  That little revelation that lead him down a path he was too ingrained in to regret.  He had a friend in the C.I.A. that pointed him in the direction of the Winter Soldier, he hadn’t been serious when he mentioned the story to John but John had zeroed in on the Winter Soldier with a certain kind of focus.  Obsessed was the word his Ex used.  She was right, of course, she was always right.  Staring at the walls of his flat Johnny thought maybe obsessed was too lesser a word.  Articles covered his walls, research, photos, notes, bright green yarn connecting points of interest and events that he knew were related.  He had stacks of books crowding his desk and piled next to the small twin bed he passed out in occasionally.  John knew how it looked, he'd run across plenty of conspiracy nuts to know on his bad days he would fit in right with them with his unkempt black hair and weeks’ worth of stubble—he knew he probably smelled like cheap vodka.  He didn’t much care about that anymore, because he knew, _knew_ with his whole being the Winter Soldier existed.  He knew the Winter Soldier had a name because he was holding it printed in black and white in his hands.

Names had just as much power as legends.  When Johnny was combing the Russian country side asking about the Soldier they all feared during the golden age of Soviet Russia the young people shrugged unknowing but many of the wizened faces that would speak to him held their breath and crossed themselves when he said the name Winter Soldier like the Soldier was the devil himself.  Russia lead him to Germany where some of the more outlandish ghost stories about the Winter Soldier were whispered to him in the back of smoke filled bars like the Winter Soldier was responsible for Hitler’s death.  The idea had been preposterous at the time but the Winter Soldier’s true name made him think maybe not.  Captain America existed, it would seem to reason the Winter Soldier had just the same right to exist in the world.  It felt like nature cruelly balancing the world out.

The name was gotten because of a face, a painting hidden with an old Russian soldier’s artefacts that were bought at auction in Munich years ago.  The painting was retrieved from a fire, it and a few other baubles only survived because they were stored in a stone wine cellar like a secret.  John dropped most of his savings on that painting, all because of its title scrawled in swirling letters on the back. Winter Soldier.  Someone had the audacity to put as face to the name that made world leaders shiver in fear.  It was a beautiful face too if not unsettling.  The artist painted the soldier in snow and emerging from the darkly shaded thick forest, metal arm on display holding a knife, his face devoid of anything close to an emotion, too cold and blank.  Many buyers found the portrait a little hard to look at because of that citing the work too much like propaganda and the lack of emotion in the figures face due to lack of skill.  None of the buyers look too concerned about who the subject of the painting was supposed to be.  John relatively got the painting for cheap compared to how much the wine bottles were auctioned off for.  He would still be living off of canned Chef Boyardee for the next few years because of that damned purchase.

The painting sat in a place of honor on John’s Berlin walls, the center of a web too entangled for anyone but John to sort through.  Which was poignant, Johnny figured, in more than one bitter-tasting way.  A real photograph cut out of a history book of who he thought the Soldier really was hung right next to it, he thought it was jarring to see them side by side.  Same features, relatively the same age as far as he could tell, but as different as the sun was to the moon.  Johnny wondered what reasons a man would have to become something like the Winter Soldier, to turn on his country and become dead to everything he’d ever known before.  John had no concrete evidence connecting the two images as the same person beyond the obvious glaring resemblance but he knew with the same ferocity he knew the Winter Soldier had killed someone right before his eyes.  The kind of ferocity a man begins to burn with when he knows he’s right beyond a shadow of a doubt and no one in the world will just fucking believe him.  He was there in Berlin to prove the connection between his two treasured images of the Soldier.  By chance Johnny read an obituary in the Munich Herald for a beloved Doctor, a national hero really with all the hospitals in the country named after him, the name of  Kurtashkin.  His death was ruled natural causes, the old man who didn’t look all that old, passed peacefully in his sleep and left a large estate most of which went to numerous charities.  The medical community was saddened and normally John wouldn’t have batted an eye but Kurtashkin’s name had come up before, only once.  Once was enough.  Enough to hold onto that name and trace back to a prestigiously honored military officer in the Nazi party working under Johann Shmidt.  The Red Skull, as history remembered him.  Kurtashkin’s records reported his death long ago soon after Captain America left Hydra in ashes.  History had been wrong, Johnny suspected wrong about a great many things.

A name, of course, could have been just a name, one carried down through a family as was the norm.  But, ironically maybe, Kurtashkin also had a face with his name and that face was far too similar to the old man in the obituary.  Similarity stopped being coincidence long ago.  Then there was the story about Kurtashkin’s Sled Dog he was told in Russia.  At the time he’d politely taken down the story about a ravenous black dog that appeared at night to tear the throats out of men who killed his master, Hans Kurtashkin.  A communication failure he’d thought, he’s asked about the Winter Soldier and they gave some folky spirit dog nonsense that was popular in many rural areas around the world.  Kurtashkin’s name had stayed with him though for some reason and suddenly the dog in the story doesn’t sound much like a dog at all.

Johnny pins a an old photo-copied picture of Kurtashkin underneath the Winter Soldier painting then pours a pot of cold coffee down the sink in his dimly-lit bathroom.  The yellowed tiles of the floor are too cold on his feet; everything is too cold in Berlin for his Southwestern American sensibilities.  He only missed home when he thought about it so he tried his damnedest not to.  He hadn’t been to the States in years…maybe he would next year during the height of summer too so he could sweat his balls off and never be reminded of Russia or Germany.

Going to sleep was always a hurdle.  His body ached, his stomach was too empty, and he always wanted a cigarette lying in bed when he knew through horror stories he’d covered himself that was a really bad idea.  His bed didn’t help anything.  It was hard, metal springs stuck out at random places and no matter how many times he washed the bedding the fabric always had a faint scent of old cabbage.  Johnny stops trying to force himself to sleep and jerks off instead.  His fantasies always a feature a prominent figure swathed in black, a metal arm, and a face out of old Hollywood movies.  The Winter Soldier would pin him down and rut into him, maybe a metal hand around his neck closing off enough air to not-quite kill him.  John’s not sure when all that happened, didn’t know when he started to get so fucked up-- knows he should probably feel dirty for it.  He comes in his hand and wipes himself off with a nearly empty box of tissues then tosses the box to the floor.  Finally, the tension bleeds away from his body, John doesn’t gently drift into sleep, he just closes his eyes and when he opens them its daylight.  Sometimes he wondered if he was really sleeping at all, maybe he just lay there all night and let time pass him by until it was time to crawl out of bed and start the grind all over again.

Morning is at the very least gentle in Berlin, grey but bright, and that day John had a goal while most days he’s swamped in decades old documents and sixth-hand stories.  That day he was going to visit the dead.  Kurtashkin was buried in a mausoleum in one of the oldest cemeteries in the city.  Johnny shrugged on a brown duster coat and hung his camera around his neck.  Pictures of a headstone weren’t very tasteful but seeing the man’s grave could still possibly tell him some small speck of information he hadn’t known before.  For every significant discovery Johnny made they were all connected by a thousand scraps of seemingly nothing bits of information.  Documented mostly by his shitty out-dated camera.  The same one he took his picture of the Winter Soldier with so many years ago.  A part of him would like to take a real picture of the Soldier with the same camera, even if it was shitty compare to the new models being cranked out nowadays.  The writer in him, which was even shittier than the photographer in him, liked the symmetry.

The cemetery’s name was wrought in black scrolling iron over the gates that blocked it off from general public view.  Unfortunately it was in German and he had no idea what it said.  Johnny snaps a picture and ignores a pair of little old ladies that scowl at him as they walk down the sidewalk.  He understands their ire, he does, that doesn’t stop him from snapping a photo of them like a bratwurst-stuffed tourist out of spite.  The gate groans like it hadn’t been opened in years whether than regularly like he knew it was.  John follows the rough map he bribed from a disgruntled city worker.  Technically the knowledge was public but John was a stranger in a strange land and could easily get lost to the laundromat and the cemetery was huge, daunting in that ancient way a lot of dark corner parts of Europe were.  When he’d started his insane search that still had some magic to it, now it was just dust and tediousness.

John walked through tombstones for a good ten minutes, swears out loud when it starts raining, before he found the monument he was looking for.  Kurtashkin had apparently not been a man of little means or restraint.  His mausoleum was white marble and carved with curling vines, Kurtashkin’s name spelled out in proud block lettering.  The mausoleum towered over the others around it, most were family crypts, he immediately started snapping photos.  He notices a strange emblem near the peak of the roof of the monument, directly above the name.  He zooms in and snaps a picture of at what at first glance appeared to be a skull nestled in the vines.

Johnny nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears a gentle string of questioning German behind him.  An elderly woman of a different bearing than that of the women on the street was behind him.  She was in a fine dress draped in cashmere shawl, her umbrella protected her from the rain but casted a shadow that made the lines of her face look too tight.

“I’m sorry, M’am.  American.”  He feels awkward.

“Ah.  Quite so.”  Her words are accented but clipped and cleanly pronounced, “I asked if you were with the news.  You look like a newsman.”

John tries for a convincing smile, “You could say that.”

“My husband was a great man.”  The woman says.  It’s strange the way she says the words as if they’d been practiced.

“I, uh, don’t doubt it.  I’m sorry for your loss.”

She smiles, “Thank you.”

“I know it’s not, um…would you mind answering a few questions?”

The woman blinks, “I am here to grieve, newsman.”

At that point, yeah, he feels like an asshole, “Right. Sorry.”  John starts to turn away but before he can he blurts, “What about a quick photo?”

The woman, Mrs. Kurtashkin, regards him coolly then she positions herself in front of the mausoleum and makes a “go on” fluttering gesture with her free hand.  John takes the picture and tries to bow out gracefully.  He can feel her eyes on his back until he leaves the cemetery.

By the time he returns to his flat, home sweet home, John is drenched.  He’d opted to wrap up his camera with most of his coat leaving the rest of his body to the elements.  When he gets inside the camera is a little bit wet but the film is fine and John begins the process of turning his bathroom into a dark room to develop the film.  The red light seeps out under the bathroom door while he sips vodka and waits.  The pictures are ready for him to scrutinize in a few hours.  A couple of the photographs are from Munich and have nothing for him in them; the first photo he picks up of the Kurtashkin tomb was the last he took.  Kurtashkin’s wife stands there with a blank expression, the next was of the carved skull  on the tomb.  Upon closer inspection, John outfitted in glasses, reveals that some of the vines surrounding the skull aren’t vines at all.  They looked like curling octopus tentacles intertwined with the foliage all around the skull like Medusa’s head.  John rockets out of his office chair to frantically rummage through the piles of books he had in the room.  He found the one about WW2 and flipped to a dog eared section about the Red Skull.  A whole page had a printed, colorized photo of one of the Red Skull’s propaganda posters, “Heil Hydra” slashed brazenly across it.  The Hydra symbol sat smiling in the center.  Side by side the two skulls were practically identical not counting Kurtashkin’s need to fancy his up.  Bold, but then everyone thought Hydra was as dead as the Nazi Party but then again there were plenty of neo-nazi fuck heads out there spouting Hitler like a hymnal.

Johnny wants to go back to the cemetery.  Last time had not been enough time to really look since the widow interrupted him.  Was she Hydra too?  It sounded like such an outlandish thing to be and successfully hide from a spouse for so long.  Did Hydra even still exist or was Kurtashkin just an old man holding onto ideals from his youth?  John wants inside the mausoleum, not sure what he’ll find there but really wanting to go.  He smells like alcohol and his coat is still damp but he goes out again anyway fueled with adrenaline gained from the brink of discovery.

He knows there’s something wrong the second he steps foot outside his building.  There’s nothing he can see wrong but he felt like he was being watched.  Halfway to the cemetery he changes his route.  Sometimes he got looks from the locals, he could stick out like a sore thumb sometimes, but this wasn’t that.  John would say it was more like that feeling you get as a child staring at the cracked closet door, black as any abyss, and knowing without a doubt a monster was staring back at you.  You couldn’t see it but it was there.  Johnny ducks into a café, gets a coffee and sits there for an hour for the feeling to pass.  It never does.  Instead it festers and grows to something akin to panic and he thinks to himself, _God, I’ve really lost it haven’t I_?  The coffee was a thousand times better than the swill he’s been pumping into himself at his flat and that should have helped calm him. It didn’t. 

John ends up walking the city, tries to appear likes he’s admiring the impressive architecture, snaps photos of memorials for fallen soldiers. The air is chilly but he’s still sweating.  He eats a fucking bratwurst from a shady street vendor like every dumb tourist ever, goes all the way and gets a beer along with it.  He’s got good eyes, critical, and made for picking out details so that they don’t see anything or anyone out of the ordinary makes him doubt himself even more.  It’s not like he’s never felt doubt before, the day the divorce papers finally caught up to him had been a day full of it, and full of a string of bars he could barely recall.  Johnny stared at his half-gone beer then poured it out behind a bush.  He walked back to his flat at a leisurely pace though suddenly secretly he was worried about his collected evidence.  If he was being followed he should have never left it unattended.

The way he crashes through his building’s entrance John can imagine what the other tenants downstairs trying to peacefully check their mail think of him.  Hell, they probably already thought he was a drunk anyway—there were no appearances to keep up unless the cops were called of course.  The embassy already had a file on him thick as a phone book, they would not take kindly to him calling again.  He makes it to his own door without drawing any more attention to himself.  There’s no sign of forced entry he notes, inside is much the same.  In fact everything is the same, almost, he goes through it all with a fine-toothed comb and finds a single variation and John’s not sure really if it was anything at all.  The painting had been held up on the wall via three thumbtacks instead of being properly mounted from the back.  The tacks were the same basic position but now they were in a perfect triangle pattern.  Someone had taken the painting down then put it back but had touched nothing else that he could see.

It was an interesting sensation, being validated while being swept away by so much sheer anxiety that Johnny felt calm.  Undoubtedly there was some giddiness threatening to bubble up inside him too.  He wanted to scream from his windows, “See!?  See!?  What I’m doing matters, it matters!”, all over the placement of tacks on a wall full of conspiracy theories.  He’s not sure what kind of crazy that made him.  Unsalvageable sounded like the right word.  Irrationally he wished he’d taken photographs of his own flat like an insurance agent would so he had something to compare to.  Knowing the place had someone in it, at least enough proof of someone for him, John decided to swept the whole place for bugs. 

John rarely talked to anyone about his research, when he did it was usually in person and in whispers.  Those willing to talk about the Winter Soldier either did so with extreme prejudice or fearful reverence and neither type of person wanted to be caught openly stating opinions either way.  Every now and then the occasion arose to call someone, schedule meets or traveling arrangements, things he didn’t want to be known.  He tears the dial phone out of the wall and cracks open the plastic receiver with a tiny pocket knife that had been left in the flat when he paid for it.   The inside of the phone is a simple jumbled of green and tan wires, the small silver piece of square metal no bigger than his a finger nail obviously didn’t belong.  Again John was struck with a wavering sense of excitement.  With shaking hands he took the bug out and crushed it and with it went all his exhilaration to be replaced with a pure exacting dread.  He needed to leave, gather up his important belongings at get the hell out of there. 

Now “they” would know he knew.

John knew people who could smuggle him out of country, he’d garnered plenty of unsavory contacts in his time in Europe.  The setting sun was on his side.  Unsavory types preferred working in the dark but it gave John more reason to move even faster.  He takes a large gulp out of the bottle of vodka in his room before he started throwing his shit into a scuffed suitcase.

He places his camera in the case before he wonders what the first mistake was: killing the bug or taking a drink.  John hits the floor, his legs suddenly jelly and his vision blurry.  John can feel the familiar click and squeak of his flat’s door opening then the heavy footfall of boots then all he knows is darkness.

When John blinks himself awake he’s sitting upright in his chair.  He was feeling the effects of the drugged vodka but was otherwise unhurt and wasn’t even bound.  When the man responsible for his predicament walked oh-so-gracefully into view John thought he might throw up.  Or cry.

The man says in a Russian accent, “This is everything.”  His sharp blue eyes catalog their surroundings, all of John’s research.  His words didn’t sound like a question but with the way those cold blue eyes settled on John and waited it definitely was.

“You’re the Winter fucking Soldier.”  John dumbly replies.  God, the Winter Soldier, right in front of him.  He looks so young long dark hair swept back into a messy pony tail, his clothes are dark but they were casual—he could be anybody on the street.  The only thing that sets him apart is his face, he’s gorgeous though John would imagine anyone looking would tear their eyes away soon enough with the scowl the Soldier wore.  Scowl was too weak a word for the way the Soldier bore through him with his eyes.  Frankly, he looked pissed.

“The Winter fucking Soldier,”  The soldier repeated in a monotone American accent that matched John’s perfectly, “yes.”

“I know your name.”  John says hoping to gain some leverage.  He’s not going to answer the Soldier’s question.  Truth was he’d been thinking of buying a storage container in the States and making copies of everything just in case but he’d just had no time.

The Winter Soldier’s scowl deepens and he tilts his head slightly as if he were some type of predator then droned off, “109 Marigold Drive, Phoenix Arizona.  Isabel Martinez.”

The air left John.  That was his ex-wife’s address, his old address, her name.  The Winter Soldier knew her _name_ , “Are you threatening me?”  He’s surprised his voice doesn’t sound as panicked as he feels.

The Soldier hasn’t moved, not even a twitch.  He doesn’t answer John because really, the answer is obvious.  The blank stare John gets terrifies him.  He’d been prepared for the Winter Soldier as an assassin, a man of little moral value who did history altering things for money.  John had been prepared for unhinged, angry, secretive.  Not blank nothingness and that’s all he saw in the Soldier.

“Alright.”  John says wearily, “Alright.  Yeah, everything is here.  Leave Izzy out of it.”

At that the Soldier moves away to apparently get a closer look of his walls.  It had to be weird.  John never imagined the object of his obsession to actually see, well, his obsession.

“You work alone.”  The Soldier says.

John knows better now and nods.  The way to the door is clear but the Soldier doesn’t seem concerned with that at all.  He can feel the small knife he’d used on the phone in his back pocket.  “Yeah. Your name.  By the way, it is James Barnes, right?  I just want to know I’m right about that.”

The Soldier abruptly stops scanning his walls and John thinks maybe he surprised him.  He takes that surprise and surges up, still a little disoriented, takes the knife and bravely shoves it into the Soldier’s back and turns to run at the door.  Johnny makes it exactly one step away when he feels an impossibly hard grip snatch him by the back of the neck and slams him into his precious walls.  He can feel the dry wall give way under the force and the pain sends shockwaves through-out his body.  The Soldier lets him fall to the ground, groaning.

The Soldier’s face is emotionless as he reaches back and pulls the little blade out from between his shoulders.  John can see the metal of the Soldier’s wrist glimmer dully from beneath his sleeve and glove when he does.  He tosses it aside and pays no more mind to John whimpering on the floor.  He steps up to the painting on the wall and tears it down, folds it up unblinking and stuffs inside his black leather jacket. 

“You’re gonna kill me right?”  Johnny says dragging himself up a little so his back is to the wall.  The Soldier turns to look at him and there’s something there, a light almost, he nods.  “Yeah, I figured.”  Johnny laughs brokenly.  “I don’t suppose you’re into last requests?”

The Soldier…actually fucking shrugs.  For some reason that is hilarious to John who tilts his head back and breathlessly cackles, “A drink?”

The Winter Soldier stares him and then moves fluidly without hesitation to where John kept a few bottles of whatever caught his fancy.  He grabs an unopened bottle of Russian vodka and tosses it to John.  His hands have tremors when he opens it up and takes a long burning draught.  John angles it toward the Soldier who surprises him again by taking a sip from the bottle himself.

“Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”  John says conversationally.

The Soldier just stares at him.

John ‘s never felt so helpless, “I suppose not.”  He wonders if he should ask the Soldier for a kiss, if he’d give him that too, but decides against it because he could kill him painfully.  John doesn’t want that.

The Winter Soldier allows him one more gulp before he reaches into his boat to pull out a wicked looking combat knife.  John thinks about the tiny knife he tried to use to escape.  The Soldier was never worried about him escaping; John was that insignificant of a threat.  It was all tragically hilarious.

The sting of a sharp blade being drawn across his throat was not that different from the sting of strong vodka going down his throat.  Strangely, John was sort of grateful, and wasn’t that the saddest part?  He’d imagined his own death plenty of times.  Usually he was old, even more haggard, even more often drunk, alone and no closer to finding…to finding who was standing in that very room with him.  He was dying, but he was dying seeing what he wanted most.  Not many people could say that, right?  It had been worth it…right?  Maybe he’d been wrong.  Maybe the Winter Soldier wasn’t a legend but a fairytale and John hadn’t learned the lesson in time.

The Winter Soldier wipes the blood off on John’s sheets.  He waits until the man is completely bled-out before he moves the body to the bed then he pours the remaining vodka over the walls, soaking the various pinned papers.  He lights a match and it all goes up in seconds.  Insignificant.  The Soldier nearly leaves the room before he stops, takes out the crumpled painting that for some reason he took, and throws that into the flames too.  The name the target had called him…it brought an uncomfortable pain to the back of his head.  It made want to take it.  He didn’t know why, it was out of mission perimeters.  He had to be careful, they were testing him for something, he didn’t know what that was either.  The Soldier does know if they caught him with the painting he would have failed. Nothing was worse than failing a mission. He hits the fire alarm on the way out—collateral damage was not approved for this clean-up mission.

Though…Neither had been the vodka.

 

 


	4. Faisal bin Musaid — Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, 2000

 

Good God, Let Me Give You My Life

4

 

Faisal bin Musaid — Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, 2000

 

“Winter, put on the cufflinks he gave you the last time.”

“You shouldn’t call him that.  It’s a nickname, it could cause problems.”

“Last I checked, Rollins, I’m the handler on this one and I’ll call him whatever the fuck I want to.”

Rollins shifted his weight under the hard glare of Rumlow.  Rumlow looked like he was going to throw a punch but Rumlow literally always looked like he was going to throw a punch.  The Asset didn’t spare either of them a look as he deftly adjusted the elegant gold cufflinks in the sleeves of his fitted suit.  The metal arm was covered in a synthetic skin under one of those sleeves, so real Rollins couldn’t tell the difference between his two hands.  The Asset looked nothing like he did months ago when they took him out of cryo.  He was refined now.  Hair much shorter and slicked back, suit and crisp American accent for his cover.  The Asset had slipped into the role Hydra created for him like a second skin, he didn’t need any additional training to know how to act in upper class society or how to act American.  Rollins thought it was damned unnerving.  Especially when Rollins was there to witness Rumlow drill the Asset on his cover.  The Asset acted like his cover, spoke conversationally in a soft polite voice, smiled bright and amused and certain questions.  He was fucking _charming_ and when Rumlow told him to drop it all those things drained away and only their Winter Soldier remained.  It was a trip, like walking out of a heater warmed house into 16 below weather outside with no coat.

Rollins sneered at Rumlow and let the subject drop.  If he wanted to play with fire, fucking raw nitro jelly really, then that was his prerogative.  Rollins was just going to try to be as far from the blast as possible when it blew up in Rumlow’s face.  Which it was going to, sooner or later.  Having to watch Rumlow sweep his hands across the planes of the Asset’s soldiers dusting off nothing made him hope sooner.  Rumlow was too attached and it was becoming obvious. 

“Target’s ETA is in twenty.”  Rollins reminded Rumlow.

Rumlow scowled and asked, “You ever been undercover before?”

“No.”

“Well then let me tell you something.  Winter here has been getting close to this guy for months now and him suddenly always turning up exactly at the same time as the target does look suspicious, alright?  Relax.”  Rumlow turned his back on the Asset for a moment and Rollins could have sworn he saw something flash there on the Asset’s face, quick and violent and gone in less than a second. 

Rumlow acted like he wasn’t afraid of the Asset but Rollins knew better.  Rumlow had been there when Kurtashkin and the Asset’s old handler who also happened to be Rumlow’s CO were torn apart.  Officially Kurtashkin died of natural causes and the old handler died in a car wreck, both were in so many pieces they had to be shoveled into their respective body bags.  Nobody knew what set the Asset off at least that’s what Rumlow said.  Rollins didn’t believe him.  Something had to have happened to make decades of programming, _loyalty_ , dissolve in seconds.

“He looks ready to go to me.”  Rollins says gruffly.

Rumlow smirks, “Yeah, alright.  Show me how you’re gonna look when you see your buddy, Winter.”

The Asset blinks slow then his face transforms into a dazzling smile, the kind people get at airports when they see their loved ones for the first time in a long time.

“And what’s your name?” Rumlow asks the Soldier.

“Warren Wells.”

“Good boy.  Let’s go.”

***

Faisal bin Musaid never knew what it was like to go hungry, to not be able to get medical attention when he needed it, or to wonder if the next day would be his last.  His clothes had never been ragged or his feet filthy.  So it was perhaps a peculiarity to his esteemed family that he was so entrenched in helping those of lesser means in his country, pouring millions into programs that would enable children reach previously unattainable education, mothers to feed their children and fathers to have jobs that could provide enough steady income to live above the poverty line.  The thing was that because Faisal was given everything he saw when those things were lacking and unlike his brothers and sisters he actually wanted to something about it.  He was very young when he’d began his philanthropic endeavors, time had left him more realistic but no less optimistic.

His father loved it.  Basked in the good press his son garnered for the family while involving himself in acts Faisal found repulsive.  War mongering, making deals with both Russia and the U.S. knowing full well it was going to cause horrendous problems for the next generation.  Faisal’s wish to help and nurture the people of the country he loved became also a crusade against the damage his father inevitably did. Meanwhile his father put more trust in him, gave him more responsibility, half for show and half because no matter how a terrible human being his father was he loved his youngest son dearly.

Any project required money, resources, and partners.  The last the hardest to find due to the fact while the world was ready to help many different nations with slews of problems of their own getting aid anywhere in the Middle East was much more…complicated, if he was being polite.  So when a big American company swooped in with an interest in sponsoring some of his urban development projects it looked like his prayers were going to be answered.  Of course Faisal did his research, he wasn’t as green in business as his older brothers thought he was.  They checked out, Silla Incorporated was looking to expand and wanted to garner some good will before they reached out to Saudi Arabia.  It was all legitimate, Faisal refused to do anything but.  Almost five months ago Silla sent one of its representatives he met in Riyadh.  His name was Warren Wells and Faisal had never been so immediately taken with anyone in his whole life.  No one had ever looked at his ideas, his hopes and dreams (so idealistic people liked to tell him, too idealistic), and validated them.  Warren saw hope where he did and in the new Millennium rife with fear of what the future might bring that was a rare thing indeed as were friends when wealth flowed through his family ready as blood.

They’re time together had collectively been short but it had been meaningful.  That night Faisal would introduce his new business partner to his family at a “small” elite gathering his father was hosting.  Only a few hundred people would be in attendance and they all were either family or people whose profits depended heavily upon the family.  Warren would be a jewel among them, many would seek him out but Faisal’s father was who he worried about most.  The man could be relentless vetting new blood and endlessly avaricious when any of his sons gained a new contact believing firmly that whatever belonged to his sons belonged to _him_ foremost until he died.  Faisal wasn’t worried about Warren though, he was a honestly lovely-looking man but beneath the delicate touches of his face Faisal saw something harder.  He was a panther among men, one that wanted to shape the century into something better, he could handle Faisal’s father.  Warren in fact had the baring that made Faisal think at times he could handle a full grown bear.  That was usually on the few times they had met early in the morning and Faisal discovered his friend was not at all a morning person.

Warren offered to pick him up from his private plane and though he hated for his friend to go out of his way Faisal found it rather difficult to refuse him anything.  Warren pulled up in a shiny black Lamborghini, the same one he always rented when he was in the city, right outside the royal family’s hangar. The doors lifted up off the Lambo with a soft mechanical whir revealing an expectant Warren, his Cheshire cat grin already in place.  He was very inch the “Young American”, reinforced by his impeccably over-priced  suit, black on black, clashing with his silver-finished aviators that Warren had once joked were too Top Gun not to wear.  He should have been a dark shadow in the Arabian sun but somehow managed to make a light all his own, his smile was contagious.

Faisal left his bags on the ground to meet his friend with open arms, “It’s been too long, dear friend!”

“A _week_ , c’mon I’m not that good of company, Faisal.”  Warren embraces him briefly before grabbing the abandoned luggage without a thought.  They barely fit in the nearly nonexistent trunk of the Lambo.

“I would disagree.”

Warren tilts his head back and laughs, “That’s your favorite thing to do.”  His blue-grey eyes shine brighter when he’s amused and that simple thing puts a little more air in Faisal’s sails.

“Now you sound like my father.”  The air conditioner is blasting in the car, much colder than normal even if Faisal was adjusted to warmer temperatures.  He figured it was Warren being American that explained his liberal use of the ac.  Faisal suppressed a shiver.

“It’s not fair that I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing yet.”  Warren revs the car with a tiny pleased smile on his face, the tires squeal as they zoom out and Faisal doesn’t tell him he’ll find out soon enough.

Love did not make Faisal blind to what his father was.  It also did not make him stupid, there’s was nothing he could do against the transgressions of his father, there was nothing he could do against his father at all lest he be disinherited and expelled from the country which was not a rare occurrence in the family.  He wasn’t concerned though, his father was very fond of him and of all his sons, though Faisal was the least like him, they argued the least.  He was certain his father would be appropriately fond of Warren as well, his new business partner could win over whole rooms with ease despite being overtly American, it added to the charm.

The two had only a couple of hours together which was used for a lively late lunch and Faisal giving Warren a rough over view of who to expect at the gathering.  His father’s ill-gotten associates were to be there as well and that was something he _was_ worried about.  But he again would do nothing about.  Faisal needed his name to do what good he could in the world, he reminded himself that every time he met a new war-hungry face in the heart of his family’s home.  Warren assured him he could handle anything, he’d met his fair share of assholes.  The way Warren grumbled it and the look on his face told Faisal he still probably had to deal with those same assholes on a regular basis.  Warren quickly moved on from the subject and asked him how his recent land buy went.

“As well as I could expect.  Many people do not want to sell.  They think I’m telling them what they want to hear only to become a slumlord when they no longer own their homes.  I try to show them what I want to do, personally, still they don’t easily trust.”

“Understandable.”  Warren hums over his tea,

“I know, it’s just frustrating.”

Confidently Warren says, “They’ll come around.  Show them the truth and people always come around.”

Faisal chuckles, “Is that all you do?  When you want someone to do something you just ‘show them the truth’, it sounds a little bit naïve even to me.”

“You’d be surprised.”  Warren says dramatically mysterious on purpose and they share a laugh.  “How about this, you do what we’re doing now but at their level.  Share a meal, or tea.  Show them you aren’t your legacy, that you’re a person, with hopes and dreams.  Show them that, and I promise you they’ll start treating you as an ally not the enemy.”  Warren’s eyes are bright and sincere yet there’s an odd quirk to his mouth Faisal realizes means he’s paying too much attention because he’s noticing such a small thing.  He’s not quite sure what either of those things mean but the words he understands.

“Thank you, my friend, I will take that to heart.”

“You do that.   Also if you take this bill to heart it will be much appreciated.”

“You’re a Miser, Wells.” Faisal accuses without heat.

“Oh, I’m plenty of things worse than that…but also true.  How do you think I afford that Lamborghini?”

The time passes quickly and the two part ways before the party.  Faisal doesn’t see Warren again until that night.  Valets are outside his father’s mansion busily putting extravagant cars out of the way and Faisal tries not to draw too much attention to himself as he waits outside alongside them.  The air was cooler than usual, his suit was comfortable for once.  Western style was par for the business world, he took it up long ago.  So did many of the guests.  The men weren’t that different from him and the women were colorful.  With the lights and the full moon hanging full and bright overhead  it was easy to romanticize the event closer to a fairy tale rather than something out of a Bond film albeit somewhat more low-key.

Punctual as ever Warren’s car appears going too fast up the long driveway narrowly missing a few cars unloading guests.  Faisal would be worried if he didn’t know that was how Warren drove literally all the time.  The man had a lead foot and some type of death wish he was certain.  Warren’s car stopped just short of taking out the valet booth and paused an unusual amount of time before stepping out which was good considering the valets needing the time for the color to return to their skin and unfreeze themselves from the shock fear of near-death gave them.  Faisal cringed and made a mental note to make sure they would get a little extra for their trouble.

Warren doesn’t look apologetic, quite the contrary, he’s dressed in some type of shark skin suite and where Faisal had been avoiding attention Warren naturally attracted it.  They walk in together and as soon as they cross the threshold Faisal’s brothers and sisters are on him like vultures.  Introductions are made and as if anything else could have happened Warren charmed them all in less than ten minutes all the while Faisal could feel the long shadow of his father hovering out of his peripheral seemingly engaged but his father’s attentions were always on them no matter what they did.  By the time they got their champagne Faisal figured his father’s priorities had whittled down and had enough to time to politely see to the new addition to his son’s fold.

His father’s smile is bright white and full of teeth and he takes his son in a hug that was warmer than anything they would have shared in private.  Warren’s presence behind him is a grounding one despite Faisal feeling like he should protect him, or maybe this one thing, this one person, he just didn’t want to share.

“Father, may introduce Mr. Warren Wells, representative of Silla Incorporated and board member.  As you know he’s been helping me get some of my more…philanthropic endeavors off the ground.”

His father, a tall rather burly man with a thick cleanly cut black beard, moved past a bit to stick his hand out to warren, “ _Pleasure_ , Mr. Wells.”

“Please, sir, call me Warren.”  Warren took his hand easily. His father was notorious for being one of those men who liked to test the mettle of other men through a bone-breaking handshake.  Faisal was ready to step in at any time if needed.

There was no need.  Faisal watched desperately trying to keep the smile off his face as his father clenched Warren’s left hand until the older man was white-knuckled and flushed red while Warren looked fine, politely waiting for the handshake to end.  His father withdrew, defeated, before the contact could be labeled awkward.  Oddly enough the man seemed almost pleased if not trying to hide the obvious pain in his hand.

“Quite a grip you have there…Warren.”  The tone in his father’s voice indicated he was indeed pleased, Faisal let out the breath he’d been holding.

Warren chuckled low, “I’ve been told that.”

“Well then son get me a fresh glass of chardonnay would you?  I’d like to have a chat with our new associate.”

Faisal can’t help the body jerk he feels at the request, he was so use to jumping to his father’s demands and it made him sick.  Warren gives him an encouraging look letting him know it was fine, don’t worry.  He bows out with all the dignity he can muster which considering he was doing something any of the wait staff could do was not much.  Once he’s out of eyesight Faisal starts feeling jittery as if leaving his father alone with Warren for any amount of time would lead to disaster or worse, the loss of his friend.  Plenty of people had stopped associating with him because of who his family was.  He couldn’t blame them.  No, he could, he just tried not to.  “Be a Better Man” was his mantra at this point in his life and the achievement of that goal was much less simple than the words.

The quest for a single drink proved to be harder than he would have anticipated.  First he was bombarded by the nosey wives of the local upper class all with daughters of age to be married, they had a thousand questions that thought they were being subtle about and half of them were variations of “And who is that gorgeous young man with you, he’s _American_?”  Ten whole minutes were wasted that way before he even got to the bar.  A lot could happen in ten minutes.  Faisal wouldn’t let him himself glance around, he wouldn’t be able to see Warren and his father from this angle anyway there was no use in looking like an anxious fool.

He’s ruder than he normally would have been to the barman, snatching the glass away without bothering with thanks so he could hurry back to Warren’s side.  He stops in his tracks at a sound that was so rare half the party were nearly as startled as he was.  There his father was, hand on Warren’s shoulder with his head thrown back and his body shaking in a full-belly laugh.  He sounded like a lion.  Warren looked on grinning devilishly obviously the responsible party for the terrifying sound.  Faisal felt jealous but more relieved than anything.  He mentally shook himself and approached them.

“Ah, my son!  Did you know our mutual friend is also an elephant gun enthusiast?”  Faisal was having a hard time connecting the laughter and that new unknown fact.  Warren had never mentioned in all their talks together he had such a hobby.  Of course he didn’t think he knew everything about the man but he thought despite their short time together they’d became close. Faisal was over analyzing the situation had he knew it.

“No, no idea.”

Warren merely shrugged like antique hunting rifles were a past time as average as bird watching, “I believe I was promised a short foray to see your collection.  You shouldn’t make promises to me lightly; I’m actually kind of a terror about making people keep them.”

“A man who doesn’t keep his word is not a man at all.”  His father says with practiced conviction. “We’ll go at once!  They’ll not miss us for long.”

Faisal, still holding his father’s damned drink, hesitated, “The…the vault, father?  You’re sure you—”

His father’s eyes narrowed, “As our charming young friend said: I made a promise.  And who knows when the next time we’ll meet with you always off _saving the world_.  No, no, it’ll be fine.  I shall alert security at once.  A fifteen minute excursion, at the most.”  His father led Warren down a long corridor.

Warren shot him a look over his shoulder that was downright apologetic.  Faisal understood now, in Warren’s attempt to get in his father’s good graces he got a little too far into those good graces.  It would almost be funny if it weren’t for the building sense of dread in his gut.  Something was off.  Warren was off.  He couldn’t put his finger on why he thought that but he knew the feeling well from a life growing up with enemies circling him like sharks from the time he could walk.

They were escorted by two subtly armed guards.  Faisal stayed silent as Warren and his father chatted excitedly about firing mechanisms and proper stock restoration that didn’t damage the wood.  He felt ignored but trailed along anyway unwilling to let his father take Warren into the vault were he kept everything precious, the odd venomous thought that his father would try to keep Warren there swept across his mind fast as a shooting star.  The urge to not let Warren into the vault quickens his blood.  Before he’d likened Warren to a panther but looking at him now he sees a wolf and they were nothing but hens clucking nervously around him for his attention not realizing what that attention could bring.  The two conflicting emotions battled inside him and left him quiet and watchful. 

They descend stairs and the old world beauty of his father’s house evolves into something more modern and chic. The door to the vault looks like any door all except the metal biometric censors attached ominously to its center.  His father leans down to let the censor scan his eye then read his palm.  Warren looks suitably impressed and just a tad more worried.  Bringing someone he just met into the most secure location on the estate seemed reckless but his father was cocky, quick to impress and assured of his own safety at all times.  He’d most certainly had Warren vetted through all the appropriate channels before he even met him, got every speck of dirt on him and found him still on his level.  No this wasn’t as on a whim as he father would have him believe he was purposefully trying to intimidate both him and Warren in the most polite and friendly way possible which meant he actually liked Warren.  That could be very good or bad for their collective futures.

The door clicks and pulls itself open automatically, Faisal blinks against the bright light until the glass cases come into focus.  Lock boxes secured into the concrete walls flash dull blue lights at them.  The prized rifles had a whole wall to themselves, Warren’s eyes go wide—even more blue with the lighting, and goes straight for them.  The door seals behind them and the guards stand by it.  His father eagerly points out his favorite, and most expensive gun after he apologizes for the frigid temperatures inside the vault.  They had to be kept that way for some of the more fragile items, Warren smiled strangely and responded, “The cold doesn’t get to me.” 

Warren quickly seems… _disinterested,_ his eyes scan everything around him as soon as the door closes and his posture was dramatically stiffer.  Faisal swallows suddenly nervous and wanting out, out, out.  His father drones on and on, the guards look bored, Warren fiddles with something on his lapel and the lights flicker before going out completely.  They’re submerged in total darkness for less than five seconds. 

In five seconds he hears his father let out an indignant, then pained, squawk then the sound of gun shots ringing loud and awful in the closed space had him hitting the floor in panic.  He calls out for his father and for Warren, certain the guards had turned on them though he can’t think about who or why very well because his blood is rushing in his ears and his lungs are failing to function properly. The marble floor is ice against his face, he keeps his cheek pressed against the ground until the electricity reboots half a second later and he’s again momentarily blinded by the lights.

Faisal blinks his eyes open and the first thing he sees are Warren’s polished shoes right in front of his face.  His eyes trail up the length of Warren’s body and settle on his emotionless face.  Warren’s head is tilted to the side slightly as if he were considering something or maybe listening very intently to someone.  Behind him he sees his father laid out unmoving, the guards are in the same state, blood is splattered everywhere, ruby red droplets decorate pristine display cases.  The vault had turned into a tomb.

Faisal’s tongue was thick in his mouth still he managed to form frantic words that ended in a shriek, “Wh—what, why, what are you _doing_?!”

Warren’s eyes snap to his own and Faisal finds them blank, the man he’d known wasn’t there.  Faisal felt sick.  Warren scowls and replies in a voice thickened by an unfamiliar Russian accent, “Making the world a better place.”  Then he kicks Faisal’s teeth in.  Faisal feels his jaw break and for a moment it feels like nothing at all before becoming a strange warmth that exploded into the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life.

Through a quickly forming haze Faisal watches helplessly as Warren locates a single lock box in the wall and simply punches through with his fist to pull the box out.  The feat is inhuman.  _Warren_ is not human, Faisal decides as the dark speckles on his vision merge and he’s plunged into unconsciousness.  He’s certain he’s going to be killed but the pain of the death of his father barely ahead of the betrayal of a friend leaves him…not caring.  The last thing he hears is Warren’s voice in mechanic Russian say, “Target acquired…affirmative.”

Except Faisal eventually does wake up.  The next day is full of pain everywhere and not enough pain killers.  His jaw is wired shut and his head is in a brace, casts are on both of his arms all the way to his fingers but he doesn’t remember having them broken.  Soon he realizes he’s in a hospital there’s a faint smell of lavender in the air mixing in with the grotesque chemical smell all hospitals carried.  He’s not able to stay awake for long.  He comes in and out of consciousness for a few days until one day, he honestly couldn’t say which—the doctors and staff refused to even talk to him, he wakes up to a room full of people.  Two of his brothers are there along with three other men, two officers and one tall dark man in a military uniform.  His brothers look thunderous, disgusted, so many emotions were reflected on their faces and it was all directed at him.  It’s the man in the military uniform that explains to him why.

“We traced the contracts to your computers.  We know you paid one of your father’s personal guard to kill him, we have proof of the wire transfer from one of your supposed charities.  Quite the racket you were pulling with those.  Buying up all that land and trading it for political favors, I’m sure your friends would have loved to see you in power after your father’s death.  That, obviously won’t be happening.”  The man said righteously.  “The other guard had a good showing, we found your blood all over his knuckles.  Real loyalty there before he and your hired thug killed each other.  This whole ordeal has been one of the most abhorrent things I’ve ever had to witness.  You’ll understand your family wants this all to go away as quickly as possible.  The crime of fratricide is punishable by death and is exactly what your brothers have pushed for.  It will be quiet and quick if that’s any consolation though personally I think you deserve neither.  The next three days will be your last.”

Faisal wished he could speak, wave his hands, tell them anything.  _Scream_.  That was likely the reason why his mouth and hands were taken care of, he belatedly comprehends.  Still, he tries.  But they refuse to give him any more time.  What they were doing was not legal but no one was going to stop them, it was more convenient this way.  For every one but Faisal.  He was still going to die but now he would see it coming, now he would die in shame and all his good works disappeared through his broken fingers like sand.  He wished Warren had killed him too on the floor, it would have been kinder.

 

On a Hydra ship in the middle of the Persian Gulf off the coast of Kuwait Brock Rumlow escorted the Winter Soldier to meet the new Head of Hydra.  They brought with them multiple hard drives that contained information that could easily damn or save half a dozen countries in the Middle East.  The fake flesh and been torn of the Soldier’s arm and he was back in standard military dress, well, what standard for the Soldier. Rumlow had some secret satisfaction about the gleaming metal back on display.  The crew of the ship saw the tell-tale metal arm and cowed, it gave Rumlow all kinds of thrills to see that.  He marched side-by-side with the Soldier to where the new Head had made his temporary quarters.

His name was Alexander Pierce and he treated the Soldier unlike Rumlow had seen any of the other Heads treat him: like a prized employee rather than the perfect killing machine he was.  He congratulated them both on a job well done, treated them exactly the same expect for the sheer delight in his eyes when he looked at the Soldier.  Rumlow could hardly blame him.

Pierce turned over one of the hard drives in his hands and smiled, “They’re going to offer me the Nobel Peace Prize for this.”

Pierce would be right.


	5. Brock Rumlow—Washington D.C., 2014/Berlin, 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter is mostly in written from Rumlow’s perspective and all the fucked-upness that implies and also contains rape (a lot more graphic than in previous chapters), and the death of an animal in a flashback, if that is triggering for you please, please skip this chapter and continue on with being the lovely person you are.

 

Good God, Let Me Give You My Life

 

5

 

Brock Rumlow—Washington D.C., 2014/Berlin, 2016

 

There was a shadow moving around him, tall and black, and for a second Brock thought it was Death come for him.  He wasn’t entirely wrong he would later amend.  The Soldier was Death, the closest thing to the Grim Reaper walking the Earth they had.  If Winter was there with him, Brock irrationally thought, then there was hope that Hydra hadn’t failed.  That they saved the world, Order reigned and the wars ended.  Sure, Hydra helped a lot of those wars along but to stop violence they had to beget violence.  Under Hydra there would be no need for that anymore, no more drug trafficking, no more shoot outs on the streets, a perfect society where no one’s daughters were gun downed in gang drive-by.  A perfect society.  And he would be a hero.  All the things he’d done that would’ve damned him otherwise would be listed like individual badges of honor.  Every buried body was just fertilizer for his future.  He would have Winter.  Finally… _finally_.  Peirce would let him have the Soldier for all that Brock had done, there would be no need for an assassin anymore anyway not with the helicarriers in the sky…the helicarriers in the sky, that weren’t in the sky any more were they?  Fuck.  _Fuck_.  Reality crashed cruelly into him and Brock felt the bile rise in his throat. 

Winter moved out of his peripheral so Brock could fully see him.  He was in civilian clothes and had a baseball cap pulled down low blocking anyone from really seeing his face.  Winter’s posture was different.  Brock knew everything about the Soldier, studied him for years always looking, staring, wanting, he knew something was off.  Brock wanted to move but found himself strapped to the hospital bed.  He wondered how long had he been there?  He had a fucking building dropped on him he couldn’t imagine the recovering time for something like that was even with the drugs Hydra provided for his strength and endurance.  Brock didn’t feel them in his system anymore in fact he felt very, very weak.  He was an injured lamb laying exposed right in front a starving lone wolf, Winter tilted his head up just so and Brock could see his eyes, the Soldier was very much aware who was who here.  Brock had seen those eyes with that amount of clarity only once before.  So clear, so beautiful, so chillingly furious.  The danger of the Winter Soldier had always been a part of what got his blood pumping, it didn’t help his obsessive nature that all that power came in such a pretty package.  Despite being on the receiving end of the Soldier’s fury Brock was having a hard time really thinking he was being threatened.  Maybe it was the pain making him loopy or maybe it was the fact that he’d been the Soldier’s handler the longer than anyone else before and Winter hurting him seemed…unlikely.

Brock worked his jaw, the movement was painful and his throat felt as if he’s swallowed ten thousand razor blades but he could still talk even if his voice was the equivalent of gravel being shoveled, “Winter.”

The Soldier looked directly at him and all the breath rushed out of Rumlow’s aching chest at the intensity of the gaze, “That’s not my name.”  Winter’s voice is soft but confident.  “I know the man on the bridge…I know you too.”

The intent behind the words is damning.  It’s not simply “I remember your name and function”, it was I remember _everything_.  Rumlow bristled at the accusation inherently there.  He could have been so much worse instead he went out of his way to be kind.  He fell in love with the Winter the moment he saw him and never treated the Soldier like a simple to dog that nipped at the heels of strangers.  Rumlow had treated Winter like a chained god, one that needed guidance certainly but always above all those around him.  In exchange, yes, Rumlow took what he wanted, what he believed he was due. 

 

The first time he spread Winter’s milky thighs open for him was fucking cathartic.  He’d almost came in his pants right then and there, his hands shook and his heart pounded in his chest.  They were in a safe house waiting for extraction somewhere in the middle of Colombia.  Of course Winter completed the mission long before command projected he would.  Rumlow had twenty-four hours alone with Winter.  It was also the first time he was the primary handler for the Soldier on a mission, that everything had gone perfectly had him singing Winter’s praises the moment they were alone.  Rumlow whispered how good he was while carding his fingers through the Soldier’s hair.  He’d been careful, telegraphing each touch before they landed.  Rumlow had seen what happened when unwanted advances had gotten rough.  The memory of his old CO getting his neck snapped (and then systematically shredded) by the man he was gently lowering down into a basic mattress on the floor somehow got him even harder.

Winter had been silent the entire time, he would stay that way every time after too, even as Rumlow stripped of his constricting leather and mountain of weaponry.  The Soldier merely watched him work until Rumlow went down between his legs to lave long wet lines over Winter’s hole all the way to the tip of his cock, that got Rumlow a pretty flush all over the Soldier’s body.  Rumlow became addicted to the taste and making the Soldier look like that even if he didn’t get the moans and gasps he’d always imagined.  Rumlow worked his tongue inside Winter until he was loose enough for a couple of fingers.  The Soldier’s hands curled into fists at the intrusion but still made no other movement or sound, he furrowed his brows as Rumlow pumped his thick digits in and out of his body.  It was dragging a little, Rumlow didn’t particularly care.  He surged up and takes Winter’s cock into his mouth, all the way down to the hilt, and continues to pump his fingers—trying his damnedest to get the Soldier hard.  Winter’s cock stiffens only a little under Rumlow’s ministrations fueling a spark of anger inside Rumlow.

  He stopped being so gentle and roughly turned Winter over hissing, “What’s the matter, beautiful?  I don’t turn you on?  Let’s change that.”  Rumlow forces the Soldier’s knees to the side and holds him down into the mattress by the back of the neck.

Rumlow spits into his hand and uses his own precome to slick himself before breaching Winter’s reddened hole.  He groans loudly as he presses in inch by inch.  The Soldier tenses beneath him, tightening around his cock inadvertently pulling Rumlow in further.  Rumlow grinded against Winter when he was all the way in then pulled almost all the way out before slamming back, he grabbed Winter’s hips in a bruising grip and started fucking into him ruthlessly mumbling sweet nothings. 

“Fuck, baby, you take it so good.”  Rumlow rasps while he watched his own cock go in and out of Winter’s abused hole. 

Sweat trickles at his temples, their little shack is hardly air conditioned and Colombia was not known for its cool seasons.  The heat gave the Soldier an enticing sheen that makes Rumlow lean downward to lick a long stripe over the Soldier’s spine and then at the scarring at his left shoulder. The raggedly healed flesh should have been a marring feature but Rumlow thought it just added to the Winter Soldier’s overall beauty.  Just like that deadly metal arm, there was no part of Winter that wasn’t deadly but the arm was overtly so, like teeth on a tiger.

He thrusts forward a few more times then comes inside his Winter with a shout.  Rumlow slumped over Winter’s body and lazily laid soft kisses all over his shoulders and neck, he turns the Soldier’s head to capture his mouth in a sloppy kiss.  Winter had gone soft sometime during the sex but Rumlow notes with a spike of…something, guilt maybe but he knows he’s going to do it again, that he hadn’t gotten off.  Rumlow spends his time cleaning them both up and avoids Winter’s piercing gaze.

Just like now in the hospital, Rumlow can’t hold those eyes for long.  Winter finally looks away from him to the machine that’s supplying Rumlow with the little morphine he was a allotted then pulls the IV connected to it out of his arm.  Rumlow doesn’t scream.  Screaming would come later when he’s out of the hospital in a motel room without any pain meds because for some reason the Soldier lets him go.  Winter draws a knife and easily slices through the leather straps at Rumlow’s ankles and wrists then without another word, turns to leave.

“Wait, please, Winter, please,”  Rumlow breathes as the morphine already starts to fade, “I loved you.  I love you then and now.  I love you.”

Winter doesn’t turn to face him.  Before the Soldier vanishes again Rumlow hears, “That makes it worse…and that ain’t my fucking name.”

Rumlow tries to follow only his legs are rubber beneath him when he stands and there’s no way he can get out of the hospital by running through it with his ass shining while its surely being watched.  He waits for the next to nurse to come in, luckily is a tall soft-looking man, he puts the nurse in a chokehold then steals his clothes.  The damage to Rumlow’s face is noticeable but with the way he feels he was expecting worse than what the bathroom mirror reflected.  It takes him less than two minutes to get out of the building and out to the street.  Security is alerted in three minutes, by then he’s already running down the street and jacking a nearby old pickup truck.  After picking up an old bug-out bag he stashed when he got posted at the Triskelion Rumlow drives until the truck runs out of gas just outside the Maryland state border trading it for a newer car and all the money the young couple driving it had on them before dumping their bodies in a ditch beside the highway. Crashing in a motel by the name of the Smoky Mountain Top Inn was the only thing he could do until he adjusted to the new influx of excruciating pain.  Maybe that was why Winter let him go, Rumlow thought at his worst moment, to let him suffer a bit before Rumlow offed himself.  He thought about it for a long time, the burns took a long time to get any better and all he could think about was the damned Winter Soldier.

The second time he had Winter was in a bathroom right next to a room full of Hydra agents, not unlike the shitty room Rumlow was currently staying in.  It had been a long night and Rumlow was having a hard time keeping his hands to himself.  No one said anything about him taking the Soldier off on his own, mostly they were grateful, the Winter Soldier inspired a whole new level of fear and that natural fear created a very tense work environment.  The only ones comfortable working with the Soldier were a couple of older guys who had been around a while and Rollins who was often on ops when the Soldier was required.  Rumlow guided the Soldier down to his knees and thrilled at the sight of it, such a powerful lovely creature on his knees and it was all for Rumlow.  As hard as he was it took only a short five minutes with his cock stuffed in Winter’s mouth to come.  He grips Winter’s silky hair and presses his face into his crotch forcing the Soldier’s mouth wider allowing Rumlow to come down his throat.

Winter’s lips are an even brighter red than usual and Rumlow can’t help but to kiss him.  A week later Rumlow found out some rookie had seen them and tried the same thing with his Winter.  Killing the idiot was already taken care of by the Soldier himself who had shoved a combat knife so far into the kid’s sternum they had to dig it out.  That just of easily could have been Rumlow and he should have took it as a sign to stop.  He doesn’t and Winter never stops him.  Once he asks him why that was, the Soldier simply stared right through him.  The Soldier rarely talked out of missions when he was either growling out orders or responding to orders others gave him.  Rumlow didn’t think too much about the pain in his gut when he realizes he wasn’t going to be the exception for that too.

After each wipe Winter forgets Rumlow.  Rumlow always tries to get him to remember to no avail.  He gets more frustrated with each passing year, more violent, more obsessed.  It gets worse when Hydra takes the Soldier away from him to be put back in cryo.  Any spare time he had was spent staring at his sleeping beauty covered in thin glistening frost that made him look more inhuman than he already was.  Winter never remembered him.  But after seventy fucking years, after only a couple of meetings, he fucking remembers Captain America.  Peirce tells him the Soldier’s real identity after the Soldier “glitches” at the bank in D.C. and objectively he knows if Winter was going to remember anyone it was going to be Rogers.  He still burns with jealousy and throws himself into the takeover. Rumlow wonders if he’d been less focused on the Winter Soldier whether or not events would have played out differently.

 Weeks pass and he’s able to get most of his facilities back, able to move on from the hovel he’d been living in.  In Chicago he fucks a hooker and imagines Winter.  In St. Louis he beats a man to death behind a bar and imagines Steve Rogers.  Rumlow keeps doing both until neither is enough.  He wants his Winter back and he wants Steve Rogers bleeding at his feet.  “Crossbones” is born when he finally decides how to do that.

Getting back to fighting form took much longer than Rumlow would have liked.  Months of training and scouring what was left of Hydra for the resources he needed to take on Captain America takes longer.  He realizes early on that he couldn’t do it alone, luckily there was no shortage of people who hated Rogers.  Hell, Rogers would never see them coming with Tony Stark spouting all that shit about the Registration act.  Meanwhile, just like everybody else, he kept an eye out for any sign of the Winter Soldier.  As it stood Winter was the world’s most wanted man.  Some people wanted justice for sins that Winter shouldn’t be held responsible for.  Rumlow was hardly an expert of morality and even if he had no personal stake in the Soldier would think that was pure bullshit.  Would a court try a gun for murder while the people who pulled the trigger were looked over?  Somewhere along the line Rumlow’s loyalty to Hydra and desire for Winter blurred and without Hydra there was only Winter left deserving of his devotion.  Others, organizations like A.I.M. and a few governments, were salivating at the thought of having the infamous Winter Soldier under their thumbs for their own uses.  Rumlow was prepared to cut them all to the ground if they stood between him and Winter.

The last time anyone reports seeing Winter was at the Smithsonian, an old security guard recognized his face from his own damned exhibit.  Rumlow wishes he could have seen it himself if only to gain a better understanding of what the fuck was going on inside Winter’s head, perhaps find a way to convince him Rumlow was on his side.  The word is too old to really catch wind of the Soldier’s heading, Rumlow was grasping at smoke.  He’d never been on this end of the Soldier’s trail and hates to admit having anything in common with Steve Rogers.  There had been a time when he’d respected the man to a degree, soldier to soldier.  It hadn’t been personal until it became very, very fucking personal.  It had also been the first time Rumlow had _wanted_ Winter to go into the chair.  To burn the Captain out of him had seemed the best option.  In the end it hadn’t mattered, except Winter remembered them erasing his mind each and every time.  The last must be fresh.

For some reason the Winter Soldier hating him never really occurred to Rumlow.  The Soldier could have killed him each and every time Rumlow had taken him to bed or put him on his knees, sometimes the other way around.  He had killed others for daring to touch him that wasn’t in an absolutely necessary way or at least broken bones.  Winter’s standing orders didn’t cover idiots.  Over the years Rumlow had noticed Winter had destructive outbursts more and more often.  Erratic the doctors would call him, Rumlow would call him “more aware”.  The behavior shouldn’t have been something Rumlow encouraged and yet he did little things.  Like the nickname, Winter, giving the Soldier food that didn’t come out of an MRE, then there was the sex.  They had a relationship of sorts.  Didn’t they?  Rumlow loved him so fucking much, was it really such a terrible thing to ask for something back?  He was certain if he could just find the Soldier he could convince him to love him back.

Winter had to have let him live for a reason.

Right?

With no Winter Soldier to follow just yet Rumlow keeps tabs on a much easier target to fixate on while his new friends earn their pay.  Captain America was always front and center of some disaster.  Recently it was the mess in Sokovia.  Strangely his little bird-boy was nowhere to be found.  The Falcon made an appearance here and there afterward but always periodically disappeared, going off the grid, Rumlow’s suspicions that Wilson is on the trail of the Winter Soldier when the Captain can’t be are confirmed in Germany.

To say that Rumlow was irked that Wilson found a lead when he couldn’t was an understatement.  Itching to give the little bird the ass-kicking he was owed Rumlow followed him all the way to Berlin.  Wilson was holed up in an unassuming hostel full of mostly college-age kids going through Europe on holiday.  Somehow Wilson managed to blend in with the eclectic crowd and was all charming smiles, he had a English-to-German guide book in his hands for fuck’s sake.  It was all very irritating to watch through Rumlow’ binoculars across the street, the building Rumlow was in was also the one he was staying in.  The building was a decrepit health hazard with lead paint falling from the ceiling.   Rumlow’s floor was particularly shoddy but it had the best view of the hostel across the street. 

He didn’t have to wait there long before one grey early morning Wilson was almost tripping over himself with the speed he was running outside.  His mobile was pressed to his ear and he was looking around frantically.  Rumlow got a little nervous and moved back, he hoped he hadn’t been made yet.  Luckily he wasn’t, Wilson dashed down the crowded narrow street like his ass was on fire never even looking at the window Rumlow’s hulking frame occupied.  Rumlow swears angrily and chases after him having to take a long drop into an alleyway for fear of losing sight of bird-boy did nothing for his mood.  Wilson was fucking fast too, he had nothing on Captain America for certain but the asshole definitely didn’t skip leg day.  Suffice to say keeping up was a challenge without getting noticed especially on the busy streets of Berlin.  Rumlow barely managed it by sticking close to fast-moving throngs of people and bikes which people naturally made way for.

Rumlow ended up at an abandoned textile plant.  Wilson busts through the rusty double doors of the entrance and Rumlow goes around looking for another way in.  A metal staircase leads to the second floor outside and before Rumlow sets foot on it he has his new mask covering his face and a Desert Eagle cocked and ready to go. He gets three steps up before he feels cold metal dig into the side of his neck.  The smell of gun oil reaches him accompanied by a familiar gentle mechanical whir.  Rumlow shivered, summers in Berlin were not chilly in the slightest.  The presence of the Winter Soldier himself, however, could give anyone the need for a thick safety blanket.  The gun is dug into the side of neck further, to the point of deliberate pain.

“Not. A. Word.”  Hisses Winter’s voice softly in his ear.  Whenever Winter had spoken before it had a sexy gravel quality to it now his voice was only the slightest bit husky and velvety smooth.  The sound alone made the hairs of Rumlow’s neck standup and a sharp spike of desire shoot in the pit of his stomach.

The original plan of following Wilson to Winter and then killing Wilson was only half a success.  Killing him would have set Rogers after Rumlow but his people were about to drop a bomb on his candy ass anyway, it really wouldn’t have mattered.  Winter mattered.  Winter was everything.

Rumlow let himself be dragged away.  Winter pushed him forward and orders him to “Walk.” The only thing in the distance is a few sheds and wilder part of the Spree river.  They keep walking in silence, Winter not quite in view, until they reach the muddy banks and the plant is a grungy box in the distance.

Winter gives him a final shove forward causing Rumlow to nearly fall on his face, which he supposed was the point.  Winter looks…fuck, he was always beautiful, prettier than he thought a man should be, this version of him was…radiant?  Rumlow wasn’t a fucking poet he really didn’t know how to describe him.  Winter had a healthy sort of glow he’d never seen on him before, his eyes were so bright.  Everything about him was so fucking bright.  Rumlow’s chest constricted painfully.

“It’s good to see you again, sweetheart.”  Rumlow says after a long stretch of uncomfortable quiet.

Winter’s eyes narrow, “Stay away from Sam Wilson.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rumlow scoffs climbing to his feet, “He has it coming!  They all have it coming!  Look at what they did to us!  They doomed the world.”

A small cruel smirk formed on Winter’s lips, “They stopped Hydra from giving the world the freedom it deserved—”

“Yes!”  Rumlow exclaims like the Soldier finally got it.

Winter rolls his eyes, he actually fucking rolls his eyes, Rumlow is having a hard time processing such a simple gesture from the deadliest man on the planet, “ _Shame_.”

“I always knew you had a bad attitude underneath all those ‘yes, sirs’.”  Says Rumlow half annoyed, half awed.

It was the wrong thing to say.  Whatever personality Winter had shuts down, his face is a deadly sort of blank and his words are curt and hard, “Stay.  Away.  From Wilson.”

“Sweetheart, I’m just finishing what we started.  I saw you throw his ass of that helicarrier and I had him in the palm of my hand at the Triskelion.  Why do you even care?”  He asks suddenly jealous, “You don’t even fucking know him.”

Again the wrong thing to say, again a minute shift that isn’t in Rumlow’s favor crosses the Soldier’s face.  Winter refuses to answer him this time and his reasoning crashes into Rumlow in an awful dose of simple reality.  It’s not about Wilson, it’s about Rogers.  Always, Steve fucking Rogers.  Sam Wilson was Steve Rogers’ friend, that was the only reason Winter wanted to protect him.  He would tell Rumlow to back off over such an insubstantial thing.  Rumlow’s blood boiled.  He doesn’t realize he’s raised his hand to strike out until his fist is being crushed in a metal grip.  It dawns on him that Winter had never physically hurt him up till now.  Not once through all he did.  A chilling fear creeps up his spine faster than the pain shoots through his arm, but Jesus, how fucked up is it that he’s getting turned on?  Winter notices and let’s go of him like he’s been burned.  Rumlow’s not sure what hurts worse, the rejection or his hand.

Rejection feels like this to Brock Rumlow: when he was thirteen he brings home a stray cat.  That cat was friendly and orange, obviously not out on its own long.  He begs his dad for an hour straight resulting in tears running down his face.  His father never moves from his position on the couch, never glances up from the evening paper.  Little Rumlow can’t keep the cat so he smothers it to death instead and puts the body under the front porch.  His mom and dad complain about a weird smell for weeks.  Rumlow heard once, in a song maybe, “if you love something let it go” the idea being if what or who you loved felt the same way they would come back to you.  He thought that was fucking stupid.

If you loved something you should hold it near.  If you loved something you should never let it go, if they never love you back, then you hold them tighter until they stopped breathing.  If you couldn’t do that, the logical thing to do was eliminate the factors that kept them from loving you in the first place.  Be the only thing in their world and then what choice would they have?

No choice at all.

Wouldn’t that be better anyway?  Some people could use a little order in their lives, better with it.  Winter would be better with some order again.

“What do you think you’re going to do if I don’t leave them to infest the world more than they already have?  Because I don’t think you’re going to do a goddamned thing.  You let me go.  You remember that, sweetheart?  You know why?”

Winter’s face crumpled a little.  He looked so lost for moment and in almost-whisper says, “I don’t know.”

“You let me live and you let me go because you still fucking _need_ me.”  Rumlow is so _sure_.  A venomous sort of certainty that wraps around his whole being and gives his vision a peculiar sharpness. 

The wind picks up ruffling Winter’s long strands and seems to help clear the Soldier’s fogginess.  There’s actual anger in his voice when he finds it and the slightest lilt of Russian accent, “Back. Off.”

Russian came out of the Soldier’s mouth as often as English on missions, usually when he was pissed off and often enough that all of his handlers were made to learn it.  His English getting colored by it had never happened before, as if the two were blending together.  Winter’s trigger finger twitches.  Anybody else on the receiving end of that stare would have been dead.  Rumlow stiffens, he felt like a target but Winter blinks slowly taking a step back.  He turns and starts walking away.  The dismissal urged Rumlow to his feet.

“Winter!”

The Soldier never stops, doesn’t look back either.

“ _Winter_!

Dismissed.  Ignored.  Rumlow clamps his mouth shut, preventing himself from screaming after the Soldier’s retreating back.  He squeezes his eyes shut and when he opens them Winter is gone without a trace.  Like he hadn’t been there at all.  A terrifying thread of “Was he ever really here?” almost hangs Rumlow.  He shakes it off and grabs a hold of his rage instead.  He would do as Winter so politely asked.  Today Sam Wilson would live.  Tomorrow the winged bastard and Rogers both were going to _burn_.

Tomorrow was more like a week as Rumlow as a part of Baron Zemo’s forces helps plan the attack on Captain America and the remnants of the Avengers.  It was pathetic really, the way they went at each other’s throats while the true danger was creeping up behind them all with its knife drawn.  Rumlow spots Winter running with Rogers once and he ends up punching a wall so hard he fractures his hand.  Seeing the two together fuels him further, makes him reckless and impatient.

Rumlow can’t wait for Zemo to make his move, he’s been waiting so long already.  Recon reveals Rogers alone in at one of the largest farmer’s markets in Berlin, technically a bazaar, as if he were just like anybody else.  Rogers has a scrap of paper in his hands and he looks down then around somewhat confused.  The Winter Soldier is nowhere in sight.  Rumlow had been preparing for this since he got out of the hospital.  He pulls his mask over his face roughly,  the snaps are a little too tight to be comfortable.  He’d painted the skull on himself one night he was completely wasted, the effect was a rather sinister design he ended up liking too much to take off.  The blades attached to his arms are custom too though much more professionally done.  They’re made of the strongest metal he could get his hands on, not strong enough to cut through the Captain’s shield but strong enough to ,say, cut a certain Falcon’s wings right off his shitty jetpack.

He feels ready.  Right.  Rumlow grins behind his mask and activates the external skeleton on his gear that’s going to let him go toe-to-toe with history’s most revered superhero.  Calmly Rumlow walks out from the alley he was lurking in ignoring the immediate scared looks he gets.  Humanity still hasn’t learned shit.  They see a guy like him and they still just stop and stare like aliens didn’t fall from the sky these days and cities didn’t get pulled off the Earth by crazy robots, they should be running.  Rumlow remedies that real fucking fast.  First he throws the flash bangs follows by some definitely illegal smoke bombs.  The way Rogers jumps and spins around is almost comical.  His reaction to Rumlow fully as Crossbones is much more appropriate.  Rogers’ eyes widen, he squares his jaw and…runs away?

Crossbones doesn’t even think before pursuing him at full speed which is significantly faster with his shiny new upgrades.  He can tell the Captain is surprised by it.  Of course Rogers wouldn’t think he’s on his level.  Captain America thought he was so much better than everyone else.  He didn’t deserve Winter’s loyalty.  He didn’t deserved to breathe the same air as Winter.

Rogers suddenly lunges left, out of the field of smoke Crossbones had created and when he rolls out of the way of Crossbones barreling past he grabs his shield seemingly out of nowhere.  Stashed to not draw attention to himself while he was out in public.  Rumlow always thought it was stupid to wear the equivalent of a target right on his fucking back.  Rogers turns to face him now and all Rumlow can think about is how much Winter cares about this man.  Wants Rogers more than he wants him.  It hurts, so much so he can’t help but to spit poison.  He tells Rogers how Winter sounded when screamed, taunts him with gory images of all the people he saw Winter obliterate.  None of it gets much of a reaction when Rumlow comes in close to slash and jab getting parried by that damned shield each and every time. Rumlow knows what will piss Rogers off the most because it’s what pissed himself off the most.

“He remembered you, you know.”  Rumlow says after landing a brutal scratch to the front of the shield it looks like someone taking a key to a car in passing but the force startles Rogers as does the words Rumlow has for him, “He _remembered_ you, right before we tore it out of him, your buddy.  _Your Bucky_.”

Rogers’ face _breaks_ , crashes in an expression that is heartache incarnate and its _perfect_.  Rumlow hasn’t felt this good in two fucking years.  He can’t help the desperate sounding laugh that comes out of him.  He remembers the sensation of licking into Winter’s mouth in that moment, the Soldier tasted always slightly sweet even when he had blood in his mouth.  Rumlow’s reminiscing is rudely interrupted by the Captain’s fury.  One second of Rumlow not being able to put a lid on his own thoughts is the same second Roger’s complete vengeful rage overcomes his sorrow and he slams into Crossbones hard enough to send him flying across the street into a glass storefront.

Enhanced body armor takes the brunt of the force, what’s concerns Rumlow  more is the air being pushed out of his body and the odd sensation of being dragged.  He blinks.  He _was_ being dragged, not by Rogers but by Winter.  Rumlow wanted to crack a joke only he was still having a hard time breathing and was somewhat blown away by Winter.  He was beautiful decked out in a black combat uniform so like and yet unlike his old one under Hydra.  Winter propped him up on a wall and stared him, deliberating something as he scanned Rumlow’s form.

“You never listen.”  Winter says quietly.  Disappointed? 

Rumlow wants to reach out and touch his face but can’t because of the damned blades attached to his arms.  Rogers isn’t far behind, he’s angrier than Rumlow’s ever heard him.  It’s damned satisfying.  He expects Rogers to come storming in and rip Winter from him but that never happens.  No one comes between them.  Winter stays deathly silent, the shroud of blankness doesn’t change even as an explosion shakes the ground.  Rumlow figured Zemo wouldn’t let him do whatever the hell he wanted on his own for long before making an appearance.  Rogers isn’t alone anymore either.  The fight erupting outside will tear the little section of the city a part.  At the moment no one bothers to care.

“This is for us.”  Rumlow tries to explain, “Me and you, I love you so much.  I know you love me too.  Rogers is clouding your thoughts.  I can make it all clear for you again.  Like it used to be.”  Rumlow barely recognizes his own voice.  He sounds as pathetic as everybody else, all those lesser than him are suddenly equal because of a few desperate sentences.  Sickening.

Winter presses his lips into a line then shakes his slowly, “No.”

Rumlow freezes at the blunt reply.  Then he surges forward grabbing the Soldier and flipping him onto his back.  He shoves his leg between Winter’s thighs.  The familiar position sets Rumlow’s body afire, thrumming with pent-up need.  Winter doesn’t look alarmed Rumlow doesn’t register why until he feels pressure at his throat—the only part of his new armor that is only simple black canvas cloth exposed only at a certain personal angle.

“You’re not going to kill me, Winter.”  Rumlow says in a heavy breath.  He’s never been more certain of anything in his life.

Winter’s lips stretch into a smile nothing like the calm gentle looks he’d given Rumlow since their strings were cut from Hydra, “My name is James Buchanan Barnes…but you can call me, Bucky.”

Bucky pulls the trigger.  This particular bullet had been on its way to meet Brock Rumlow for decades, delayed for the past couple years simply because Bucky had a list and Rumlow was only at the center of it and honestly Bucky had found it hard to sort through what he felt towards Rumlow.  Those feelings were never anything good.  The gunshot is loud but the mess is contained to blood oozing out of the eye holes and breathing slits of Rumlow’s mask, his armor holds up, good for Rumlow.

 Bucky would remember the bleeding skull for a long time.  Eventually he hopes that’s all he’ll remember about Brock Rumlow.  He tears off the front of Rumlow’s armor and double taps him in the chest—just to make sure.  Hell is going down outside and he straightens himself, he’d just killed one of his nightmares. 

Bucky enters the fray fighting alongside Steve confident he can kill a few more.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This pain train is coming to stop and I am so ready for some Bucky/Steve after all this awfulness. Thanks for sticking with me guys and for all your lovely comments.


	6. Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers: Washington D.C., 2014—Wakanda, 2015—New York, 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is different than the others in that it starts out from Bucky’s perspective and goes into Steve’s. It’s all a bit still wibbly wobbly timey-wimey then catches up to civil war there at the end. Also Steve swears, at least mentally, like the soldier he is. Thank you for all the incredible comments you guys have left for this fic, you’re all wonderful.   
> Warnings for short and sweet smut near the end between Bucky and Steve.

 

**Good God Let Me Give You My Life**

**Chapter 6**

**Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers: Washington D.C., 2014—Wakanda, 2015—New York, 2016**

 

               

The Asset…no…that never sat right.  The Soldier.  Soldier was the only certainty he ever had.  He knew with absolute surety very few things, but that he was a soldier—that knowledge never wavered.  Asset was a moniker distributed by the heads of Hydra.  Yet the Soldier’s handlers rarely addressed him as such.  To them he was always the Soldier, to those the Soldier commanded on the field he was only ever “Sir”.  The Soldier had marked the difference.  The difference cultivated seeds of contempt within him.  No matter how many times they burned his blood with electricity, the contempt remained.  Festering until it became the foundations upon which the rest of his fractured mind slowly built itself. For some reason he believed names were important. They could never burn everything, a piece always remained, shadows of thoughts and opinions not quite there.  But enough was there to begin, over and over again he began. 

The Soldier kept lists.  Doing so felt somewhat disloyal but he couldn’t ascertain why nor could he stop himself, it was automatic.  Never written down and sometimes not always reliable but he kept them anyway.  Each face the Soldier encountered had a list attached to it not unlike a mission file.  People always needed keeping in order, technology and weaponry on the other hand came as easy as breathing even as the years shuttered by like out of focus photographs.  The Soldier always just knew how to work computers and fly advanced aerial assault vehicles.  His body remembered, he relied on that innate knowledge—each piece coming to surface whenever the need arose.  Information about the faces his saw was a much more hard-fought process, the Soldier scraped at the inside of his own mind for whatever he could until the ache in his brain became too much or his handlers reset him to zero.  Resets were necessary to operate efficiently, the Soldier knew that in a detached way.  He also knew he hated them and constantly working from a “blank” slate was frustrating.  His handlers looked at the Soldier like they knew him better than he knew himself.  They probably did, that didn’t mean the Soldier was okay with that.  He was not okay with so much but it did not nor would it ever matter.  He was a soldier, he followed orders, and he was helping build a better world.  The Soldier knew those three things above all else yet he kept on making the lists as if he were trying to work his way toward something important but could never quite find his way to.

One of His longest lists was attached to Alexander Pierce.  Head of Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D. Councilman, can’t sleep past five in the morning, fond of Jazz, never misses his granddaughter’s soccer games, somehow always manages to mean what he says, prefers to be the first face the Soldier sees after coming out of cryostasis, also prefers to assign targets to the Soldier personally, sometimes calls the Soldier “son” in a fond though colloquial manner, believes the ends justifies the means, keeps a bottle of cleaner inside his suite pocket specially formulated to remove blood stains, never flinches when someone screams.  The list is much longer and the Soldier knows there’s no reason to memorize every single thing his CO says.  The names of the man’s close family members are not relevant.  None of it was really.  With a viciousness that refused to appear on his face the Soldier keeps those names anyway.  Just in case?  Just in case.

Each time he steps out of the chair the information comes faster, more sure.  The night he faces Steve Rogers, Captain America, he’s struck by an onslaught by useless little things like bullet points he instinctively knows about the man.  He hates it, somethings coming from nothings, he hates it and by proxy hates Rogers with everything he has.  Of course Rogers wasn’t the target, the Soldier catches the shield hurled at him and throws it back hard enough to have killed a regular man, Rogers was never a “regular” man.  How would he know that? 

The target was eliminated, they did not deactivate him though they did not tell him anything further, any more information wasn’t needed.  If he was still in operation the mission wasn’t over.  While he was granted rare downtime the list on Rogers grew.  Snippets gleaned from other personnel who gave the Soldier a wide berth but were too in awe of him or maybe fearful of him to out-right ignore him contributed to the list.  The news stations sometime watched by the others were all about the enigmatic Captain America, the Soldier scoffs at that.  “Enigmatic”.  Rogers was just a soldier, like him, a soldier on the losing side—the side of chaos.  There had been a hundred like him and the Soldier had cut them all down.  Rogers would be no different.

The Soldier focuses on stripping down his rifle and cleaning the barrel.  When he’s done one of the older Hydra agents with a stern countenance and hair greying at the temples, they called him “Mac”, silently hands him an old-fashioned whetstone to begin the process of sharpening his knives.  Mac takes a seat across from the Soldier on the steel utility table and follows the Soldier’s example.  The Soldier slides his cleaning kit to the man, they work without words.  The young ones gave them looks, one more man around the same ripe age of Mac joins them with bottles of water for all three of them.  His name was Reed.  The Soldier’ lists for them were long too, they’d been with him a long time.  They were not friends, they served together and had survived while others had perished.  That created a sort of comradery the Soldier allowed to them, to himself, while he glared venomously at the fresh crop of agents secretly reveling in watching them shrink back.

The gutted bank they were using as a base of operations was separated into three parts, the lab, the barracks that doubled as a training facility, and the front which if any one wandered in miraculously without getting a bullet in the brain would only see a regular bank getting renovated.  The Soldier spent most of his time in the barracks, he had his own little corner there, his own lockers, target files, equation notebooks, new shiny little pieces of tac gear, a couple of old Russian classics whose words in knew almost better than any Hydra had drilled into him.  The books didn’t belong to him, things like that often appeared when he was activated for missions, no one said anything about them.  The objects felt more like offerings to a shell of a wrathful god still feared rather than gifts of good intent.  Fear was better than the alternative.  Other than those few peculiarities for all it appeared he was just another soldier.  Except no one ever invaded that space, not even Mac or Reed, not even Rumlow who was his current handler.  _He_ however could wander wherever he pleased inside the bank, he did not ever please.  The other times he was in the lab of course, his vitals getting checked religiously, they ran him on treadmills connected to wires for hours, tested his reflexes and hardware, they were always very concerned about what he thought.

Who was his loyalty to?  Hydra.

Who was trying to save the world?  Hydra.

Who would he kill for?  Hydra.

Who would he die for?  Hydra.

His answers never exceeded one word responses and the jittery little scientists seemed to like it that way.  A few times he doesn’t bother answering at all and the scientists get nervous, enough so to cut their sessions short.  Out of everyone the Soldier has the least patience for the white coats.  His ire is written plainly on his face, his lists for all of them were short.  Perhaps because the only time spent with them was when they were treating the Soldier to some type of agony.  Perhaps because he didn’t want to know about them, they were expendable anyway.  They feared him the most.  The Soldier heard stories about himself whispered low, of how he’d slaughtered his science operation teams before.  He doesn’t remember ever doing that.  But if he did…then…oh well.  Rumlow often said in a reverent tone, “Remorse isn’t in his playbook.”  The Soldier never had anything to say to that, objectively he knew what the feeling was but he could not recall ever feeling it.  He was fairly certain Rumlow knew fuck all about his playbook.

Rumlow didn’t like the way the Soldier paid attention to 24-hour new stations go on about Captain America or the Avengers, Rumlow was always a bit of an open book to the Soldier.  He’d sometimes get up and shut the TV off or switch to something else, it caused a few agents to grumble but they didn’t ever stand up to the man.  Rumlow wasn’t just the Soldier’s commanding officer though the Soldier seemed to be the only one of them he was ever interested in.  A handler was supposed to be a constant observer.  The Soldier didn’t want him observing too much.  When Rumlow’s hands settled on him he leans into it, which seemed to mollify the man enough to leave him be.  For the moment.  Rumlow walks away, Mac gives his retreating back a hard look then frowns returning to something on his mobile, no one turns the TV back on.  Mac does eventually get up and gives the Soldier his phone, the screen is already queued up to CNN and the BBC World News.

“I’ll be wanting that back.”

The Soldier nods in acknowledgement.  He gets the hang of the modern mobile in seconds, he doesn’t leave the pages Mac gave him but he still learns massive amounts of information.  It would seem the news on TV had a habit of doing a lot of talking without talking about anything important.  Scrolling down, he’s a bit irritated when he finds out his metal hand was useless in that regard, and he’s struck by Steve Roger’s face again.  The picture used looks like a candid taken from far away, the suit he wore was nothing like what was in his thin file now.  For some reason the spangled red, white, and blue outfit made him want to smile.  He didn’t.  A roiling sensation bubbled up inside him, the taste of iron lingers on the back of his tongue.  The Soldier pushes it down, and focuses on the pain streaking through his brain like blistering lightning.  The rest of the unknown feelings get washed away and the pain remains.  He relaxes into it then it’s gone as if there was never anything there at all.

Pain was order.

The Soldier repeats the words to himself mentally as he continues to read.  Reaching for…something, through the fog of a vague ache.  When Pierce summons him the “research” seems somewhat justified.  He’s given two highly level targets, the highest, and the all clear to do whatever it takes to complete the new directive.  Steve Rogers is one of the two.  The Soldier knew it was going to happen eventually.  The way other agents would bravely glance at him and wonder aloud to their pal sitting beside them, “I think he could kick Captain America’s ass.  I’ll bet money on it.”  “Maybe, but do you think he can kill him?”  “That’s the Winter fucking Soldier, he can kill anything.”

Pierce shoots his own maid for seeing them together, the Soldier doesn’t blink.  He continues to look a Pierce and his eyes narrow.  Pierce in turn seems to be watching him right back, daring him to say how unnecessary the shot was.  He doesn’t say a word, Pierce smirks.  The Soldier is always mildly relieved to leave his superior’s presence, that night more than usual.  He had a mission now, everything was easier to deal with when there was a mission to be done.  The noise fell to the wayside and the goal shined bright like a beacon guiding him to the cool, dark promise of rest.

Rumlow kisses him before he leaves with a strike team against Rogers and Romanoff, his handler won’t be with him on the mission and the Soldier can see how much that upsets him.  This kiss tastes familiar, something they’ve done before.  He’s attached to Rumlow in a strange way that physical intimacy breeds, the Soldier wants to tear away and cauterize those feelings.  His metal fingers twitch around the base of his side arm, Rumlow doesn’t notice and the Soldier makes a fist instead.  When he hits the bridge it feels like a relief.  He gets hit by the Romanoff woman and then its starts to feel a lot like _fun_.  Sure, initially he’s pissed off but it wasn’t often he was actually sent against anyone that could give him a real fight.  Romanoff proves to be smart, she was always smart, she was never fast enough though.  Russian winters, and a room full of blank-faced girls standing in rows like so many red tulips flash in his mind too quickly to grasp.  The images mean nothing.  Rogers appears in time to save his ally from the Soldier’s bullet.  The Soldier wonders why he thinks that’s a good thing. 

He fights, likes he’s never had to before full-force and brutal without so much as a few seconds to catch his breath through the mask on his face.  He hates that fucking mask.  On stealth missions it wasn’t such a hindrance, useful even, out on the street in hand to hand combat it was a weakness.  Breathing was difficult and it gave the target just enough time to land a solid grab on him flipping him over.  The mask comes off and the Soldier is almost grateful except for the way the target is staring at him all deep blue eyes and mouth hanging open.  The target is too white, there’s something there in his face that looks a lot like fear but not the kind of fear the Soldier was used to seeing.

“ _Bucky_?”

Bucky?  Bucky.  The Soldier repeats the name, stares back as the name echoes inside him over and over into infinity and back and…oh, he knows what the kind of fear on the target’s face is now.  Recognition mingled.  The name has as much meaning as the little girls in Russia but the target’s face, those eyes, that mouth, the shine in those fathomless blues meant tears were being held back.  Still, Bucky wasn’t anything at all.

The Soldier blinks, “Who the hell is Bucky?”  then takes aim, he doesn’t have the time to wonder why he even bothered before the target’s allies are on him.  It doesn’t matter, his strike team are there and he fades into the smoke.  From the shadows he watches the target go to his knees, he looks broken, lost, hopeless.  More than anything that pisses the Soldier off because Steve…the target shouldn’t look like that, he should fight.  He always fought back before.  Even when he was a wisp of dumb punk too stupid to shut up with his chin all bloody and…

and…

The name “Bucky” heralds the fall of everything, the Soldier hadn’t known it at the time he might have held on tighter or he might’ve let go completely.  It was hard to tell, he finds at the end of it all he just didn’t give a fuck.  The Captain says the name and the Soldier falls, missteps when he’d always been so careful and tells Pierce under no uncertain terms : “I knew him.”

 The white coats push him into the chair, he lets them, and he falls further.  Then Hydra falls, then Steve Rogers, but the Soldier is there to keep him from hitting the bottom.  Bitterly, he knows no one stopped _him_ from hitting the bottom.  The bottom had hurt and it was fucking cold.  He rose stronger from his fall though, so maybe it was necessary.  Rise again and be stronger.  Oh, and he was so much stronger, still the Soldier but Bucky Barnes too and he had a new list forming at the corners of his mind.  Hydra was going to pay.  He finds it kind of funny he waits to make sure the Target-Captain America-Mission-Steve Rogers-this dumb fucking punk is still breathing before he leaves him.  Funny isn’t the right word, not when he’s chest feels like it’s being flayed open when he leaves Steve alone on the banks of the Potomac.

It doesn’t occur to the Soldier he’d just saved someone’s life until he’s hot-wired a Chevy pick-up two hours out of town with a black combat knife in hand digging out his third tracker from the side of his thigh.  He’d saved a life, for the first time in his long life he’d saved someone else’s.  Wasn’t that a hell of a thing?

 

***

Government use to mean something else to Steve.  The old ideals weren’t that long ago to him, to the rest of the world it was just short a century but back then enemies were clear and war—it was never simple, hands always got dirty but now the lies went so deep it was in the blood of the nation.  Every nation.  Steve was also in the unfortunate state of _believing_ in his country, the people were good even if corruption was rampant.  He was also sort of confused when everyone acted like he was some sort of paragon of patriotism.  He’d joined the army because it was the right thing to do and because, hell, he’d been following Bucky his whole life as if he were going to stop just because of a war.  He was always reaching for Bucky, across war zones, across _time_ itself.

He’d come out of the ice after losing everything and they expected him to save the world.  He did.  They wanted him to serve again, he did.  They expected him to stop the Winter Soldier and balked when he more a less held his middle fingers up at them.  Since Natasha had given him his file Steve went through it every day, there was so much redacted it was hard to tell anything but he’d learned to read Russian, speaking and understanding the language when spoken back to him was a bit more difficult.  Copies of the files were spread out on his floor in D.C. he was looking for someplace else, Brooklyn maybe, but this was the last place he saw Bucky.  The file made him sick at first, he couldn’t eat or sleep for a week, then it just made him furious.  That fury fueled his search before Avengers work got in the way, his responsibility, after that Sam picked up his slack.  Sam was good, he didn’t have to but that’s what friends were and in this century Sam was one of the few that Steve really considered as such.  Sam knew what being a soldier meant.

Later rather than sooner Steve gets back on the trail giving Sam a break but also offering him a spot on the Avengers if he wants it.  Before Steve was kind of afraid he’d lit a fire under Sam, uprooted him from his very comfortable (and hard-fought for) life, and pushed him into a new life of world-altering consequences.  Sam made it clear he was his own damned man who made his own damned choices and really Rogers could you be any more full of yourself?  So that at least Steve didn’t have to beat himself up about.  The list of shit he _was_ definitely still beating himself up about was long.  He couldn’t fucking help it really, he’d taken too much too fast now he was too stubborn to let any of it crumble.  He’s already failed too many people.  People he’d cared about.  Loved.

He does in fact move back to Brooklyn.  His apartment there looks a bit like a carbon copy of his place in D.C. only Bucky’s Winter Soldier file gets a whole wall to itself and he’s got more drawing’s laying around.  Most are Bucky there are also a lot of Peggy and Sam, the Howlies, and here and there one could find a hastily sketched picture of the other Avengers like he was scared of them finding out about it.  Sometimes he gets pissed off at himself and his sad little life. Run, look for Bucky, drink coffee, look for Bucky, punch something, look for Bucky, talk to Sam, look for Bucky, forget to sleep, look for Bucky. He’s Captain America too, between all the moments, but he’s only Captain America when the suit is on, when he’s wielding the shield.  It’s almost too easy to get caught up in the routine and after so long chasing after the cold trails of the Winter Soldier only to find empty warehouses in the barren countrysides of countries that absolutely hated the Avengers Steve finds himself frozen when Sam calls.

“We got him, Cap.” 

The details are much more complicated than that, they don’t actually have the Winter Soldier what they have is a blurry black and white photo of a man matching Bucky’s description and a couple of descriptions about a “stone-cold looking motherfucker who just jumps off a fourth story window and lands on his feet like it was _nothing_ ” the described man had also apparently bumps into an old man with a paper bag full of groceries on the way out and _stops to help the old guy pick up his stuff_ before sprinting out of sight.  Steve’s packed and on his way to the Wakanda border in under twenty minutes.  He gets another shock when he comes face to face with the Winter Soldier again not twenty-four hours after he lands. 

The world had been such a massive insurmountable thing for Steve since he woke up and abruptly it’s finally cutting him some slack.  Or maybe not.

He encounters Bucky in the middle of the night on a coffee run because why sleep? They watch each other with identical deer-caught-in-headlights expressions that are extremely anticlimactic considering the long history between the two but then Bucky’s expression shifts to something blank and terrifying, he goes after Steve like a reflex, it’s an out and out fist fight for, God, Steve didn’t know.  Hours?  Minutes?  Steve doesn’t have his shield and that metal arm fucking hurts.  Something changes, the Winter Soldier’s movements slow allowing Steve to hit him in the mouth.  The first time in seventy years Bucky smiles at Steve his teeth are all bloody, his shined lips red with it and the chuckle that hysterically bubbles out of Bucky’s mouth scares Steve just a little bit, even so he can’t help but to smile back.  They’re both so tired of fighting, so evenly matched and so angry at everything except each other but Bucky wants to fight and Steve will give him anything.  Anything.  Steve doesn’t know what Bucky finds so damned funny, he only knows he’s not trying to break all his ribs and that’s win any day of the week. 

Bucky’s still grinning like a loon when the rain starts.  Dirt and blood streak down his face and he collapses so suddenly to the ground Steve takes a quick step forward but stops realizing Bucky just sat down, rather violently but on purpose all the same.  Steve follows him down to the pavement, they’re only a few feet apart.  Those few feet feel like a vast ocean, the infinity of space, all the aching distances Steve couldn’t hope to tread but would fucking die trying if necessary.

“I’ve been looking,” Steve takes a breath, his chest hurts, “for you.”

Bucky cocks his head just like he used to, smirks, his voice has an odd accent curling around the edges as if he were trying to keep it at bay but couldn’t quite manage, “A lot of people have…I’ve been busy.”

“Do you remember me?”  The question is answered with silence.

Bucky stands, he was always graceful before, a natural dancer’s gait with a touch of cockiness now he has the fluid purposeful movements of a predator.  No action was ever wasted.  He reminds Steve of those big lazy-seeming panthers on the discovery channel that could go from calm to killer in a blink.  He’s beautiful.  God, he’s the most beautiful thing Steve’s ever seen.

“No.”  Bucky says in an accent that was definitely Russian this time, “Not yet.”  It sounds like a promise.

“You saved me.”  Steve tells him after a long stretch of awed silence.

Bucky cocks his head, weirdly inhuman now, “From the water, yes.”

Sadly Steve smiles, “Yeah, from the water but that’s not what I mean.”  Bucky looks a little stricken, like he knows without Steve having to say the words.  Sam’s first instincts when he saw Steve had been right:  he hadn’t been in a good headspace.  Nothing to look forward, nothing to smile for, nothing to believe in.  He had been alone in a world that refused to wait for him and Steve wasn’t sure how long he could have gone on like that.  Drifting, drifting, drowning.  Like they never even got him out of the ice in the first place.  Most days he’d wished they’d left him there in his cold dreams where Bucky Barnes was always at his side, the Howlies always had a jibe ready safe from battle and blood, and Peggy was always willing to tolerate his clumsy feet while they danced.  Dreams were only ever dreams, reality was harsh.

Steve stands too, “Come back with me.”

He doesn’t really expect Bucky to agree but he does.  Steve gives him the address to his no-name motel because there was no way Buck was going walk with him out in the open when the world was always watching.  Steve doesn’t stop pacing the length of his tiny room until he hears the window open.  It’s an old window, cheaply made, it should have made a lot of noise but the only reason Steve hears it at all is his amped-up senses.  He wishes the room had more light, Bucky is like an inky shadow sliding through the window, he looks supernatural but also healthy.  Less pale than when they fought on the helicarrier, less sunken into himself, his hair is longer and starting to curl a little at the edges. 

Steve walks forward too fast and suddenly Buck has a knife and looks like he’s bracing himself for impact.  Steve catches himself before getting any closer coming to a wobbly stop with his hands flared out to the side walking a tight-rope style.  He looks the opposite of threatening and from the faint expression on Bucky’s face he’s looking straight-up ridiculous.  Something in Bucky’s posture relaxes minutely, though the knife doesn’t leave his hand. Letting Steve see the knife seems purposeful, both a reminder to Steve and maybe something of a security blanket for Buck.  He was always attached to his weapons during the war, his trench knife, mostly his sniper-rifle, Bucky had called the gun “doll” like it was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and the Howlies would crack jokes, “Jealous, Rogers?”  At the risk of sounding like a completely pathetic idiot to no one but himself, yeah, he kind of was. 

“Sorry, Buck.”  Steve takes a long step backward.

Bucky rolls his eyes and looks around, “You’ve been staying here?”

“Um, yeah, just for—”

“It’s a shithole.”  Bucky remarks scratching some paint off the wall easily with a metal finger. 

The blunt remark startles a laugh out of Steve, he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and explains, “Yeah, I know, I’m trying to stay out of sight.  I didn’t want to put any more spotlight on you than you already had.  Seemed safest thing to do.  But you probably already know that…”

Bucky sends him an incredulous look as he subtly checks the perimeter, “Until tonight I had a room at the Hyatt."  There were two things Steve found wherever he went, American name hotels and Coca-cola.  It was less comforting then he thought it would be.

“ _What_?”  Steve didn’t want Bucky to be on the streets shivering in the cold, sleeping in places like he was or worse but thats what he imagined the reality of the situation to be.  Other than being healthy Steve realizes Bucky was also clean not counting the aftermath of their earlier scuffle once he could push past his brain’s incredibly unhelpful but totally warranted chant of _BuckyBuckyBuckyBucky._

Bucky continues to look at him like _he’s_ the one who was brainwashed for a near century, “You go where you’re unexpected to go…and they have bagels in the morning.  Good ones.” He amends like the decision was riding on that factor.  Which was honestly really fucking cute.

“Great, that’s, uh, great?”  It kind of feels like no time has passed at all between them.  Technically for Steve it’s only been a handful of years.  He wants to ask how long it feels for Bucky, but he doesn’t think he has the right to ask such things yet, it’s not the time (ironically) or the place.

Smirking, a mirror of the way he used to, “Sure, Stevie.”

“God, Buck.”  Steve’s voice cracked.  Bucky doesn’t flinch backward anymore.  Steve telegraphs every movement he makes as he draws nearer.  He can smell the spicy clean scent of the soap Bucky had used over that familiar cigarettes along with rain and faint gun oil.  Bucky just watches him with bright eyes Steve’s drawn thousands of times, “Can I?”

Stiffly Bucky nods and Steve wraps him in a warm hug.  He can feel Bucky sag against him and the hot tracks of tears sliding down his own face.  The hug isn’t quite reciprocated, Bucky does move his head in a way that puts his mouth right at the crook of Steve’s neck and breaths deeply sending happy little shivers down Steve’s spine.  They stand there for a while, Steve doesn’t count the precious seconds he has Bucky where he belongs, either way it’s not nearly long enough before Bucky is sliding out of his grasp.  He stops half-way through to give Steve an assessing look.  Natasha did the same damned thing sometimes and it was unnerving then even more so now with Bucky so close radiating heat.  Bucky does the head-tilt thing again and leans fully out of Steve’s arms.  Cold washes over Steve in a sudden wave in Bucky’s absence.

“Getting to my original programming.  Is harder than I thought.  I’m sorry.”  Bucky says quietly with awkward pauses between words—consideration?

Steve doesn’t know what “original programming means”, but he hates the words and the way Bucky says them like an apology like Bucky wasn’t the closest thing to a miracle Steve’s ever witnessed and Steve has seen gods and portals into space, impossible things that were all dwarfed in the presence Bucky Barnes.  Bucky Barnes, risen from the dead.  The nuns at their childhood school would have fainted.

Taking a breath Steve says vehemently, “You have _nothing_ to be sorry for.”

Bucky’s face is blank which is frightening considering the pure New York sound of his words, “The world doesn’t agree with you there, pal.”

“I don’t care.”  The world should be the one sorry.  The world should beg forgiveness, Steve felt like he should too.  When the Winter Soldier file wasn’t giving him nightmares the image of Bucky falling off the train did.  Probably always would.

Huffing, Bucky shakes his head disbelief evident and obviously annoyed.  Anything was better than the blankness that could overtake him at any given second like clouds rolling past the sun.  Steve makes the mistake of reaching into his pocket to set his phone on the room’s nightstand too quickly and the clouds return.  Bucky is a blur twisting Steve’s arm around and pushing him backward onto the bed _hard_.  Six feet of super-solider is pressing Steve into the springy mattress with a knife against Steve’s throat the tiniest bit of pressure away from drawing blood.  Steve freezes, doesn’t dare to even breathe for fear of freaking Bucky out further but he’s not scared per say.  Bucky has his thighs on either side of Steve’s waist and their position is strikingly like their last moments on the helicarrier.  His calm shifts over to Bucky and the knife eases away painfully slow.  The tight metal grip on his arm eases off too, enough for Steve to adjust his arm comfortably though the grip never releases him altogether, instead the warming metal slides up to lightly hold Steve at the nape of his neck.

 Steve can’t really help looking at Bucky’s mouth, slightly agape and cherry red.  Heat coils in his abdomen and oh no, this is bad.  He should move before he chases Bucky off for good.  Or Causes Bucky to actually stab him.  The way Buck’s blue-grey’s narrow stabbing seems to still be a viable option.  As it turns out, Bucky’s “I’m going to stab you” look is identical to his “I’m going to kiss you” look.  Bucky leans down carefully, strands of his hair tickle Steve’s face, and gently brushes their lips together.  It’s electric.  Steve makes a sound like a wounded animal that he wishes he could have kept from escaping.

Bucky jerks back, wide-eyed and panicked, he says something quickly in Russian then swallows repeating in English, “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

Steve didn’t have asthma anymore but apparently his lungs didn’t get that memo, when he tries to tell Buck its okay it comes out strangled and whispered.  Steve’s hard but Bucky hasn’t moved even though his reaction has to be obvious.  Unsurprisingly, Khakis don’t hide shit.

“We weren’t ever…”  Bucky lets the question hang.

Steve shakes his head, “That wasn’t the first time we ever kissed but, things between us never went beyond that.”

“But you wanted it to.”  Not a question.

“Yes, so much.  I loved you with everything I had, Buck, I still do.  I always will.”  That wasn’t fair, Steve knew, to tell Bucky something like that when Bucky didn’t really remember him.  But if Steve Rogers was ever selfish about anything it was Bucky Barnes.  Bucky stares at him, it’s that same assessing look that cats have before deciding to eat or play with their prey.  Faster than Steve could blink the knife is slammed into the mattress beside his head, the punctuation to a decided decision.

The second kiss is hot, and deep, Steve opens his mouth for Bucky and the latter doesn’t waste a second before delving in with the kind of skill that had Steve’s toes trying to curl in his boots.  The first time Steve and Bucky kissed they were teenagers drunk on cheap wine behind Bucky’s apartment building.  At the time Steve wasn’t sure if he was dying or falling in love, it turned out those two things felt about the same.  Kind of like how flying and falling down felt about the same, what mattered was the difference in how they ended.  Bucky shifts his weight then rolls his hips in an agonizingly slow thrust.  Another moan punches out of Steve, he’d never wanted anything more in his life, still he brings his free hand up to tenderly cradle the side of Bucky’s face.

“Buck, wait.”  Bucky immediately goes inhumanely still, “I’m sorry, it’s just you don’t remember anything.”  Apparently Steve wasn’t as selfish as he wishes he were.  “I don’t want you to feel…God, obligated or anything.”

A scowl slowly tugs Bucky’s features down, “I don’t feel obligated.”  He sounds pissed.

“O-okay…”

“I _want_ to do this.”  Bucky moves Steve’s hand and says close to kiss-reddened lips, “Me.  Now.  Do you?”

Steve nods a little dumbly, Bucky was always somewhat blunt.  If he liked a girl he told her.  If he thought Steve couldn’t do something he just said so.  The trait had made him a good sergeant and when you were a ninety-pound nothing it made him a friend great at keeping that said ninety-pound nothing alive.  Bucky smirks and returned to kissing Steve with mission-focus.  He gently nips at Steve’s pouty bottom lip until Steve’ gasping, Bucky used the opportunity to lick his way inside his mouth.  All the questions Steve had wanted to ask when he saw Bucky again melted in the face of Bucky’s heated ministrations. 

Bucky finally lets go of Steve’s other arm so he can languidly press his body down into Steve’s and Steve can finally put his hands to better use trailing up Bucky’s thighs to the waistband of his jeans where Steve can feel the expanse of warm skin under his fingertips.  Bucky makes a pretty noise at the simple contact which Steve endeavors to recreate again and again. He traces the hard V of Bucky’s hips, hand stuttering over the zipper of his jeans.  Above him, Bucky scoffs, then reaches between them one-handed and undoes both their zippers pulling out equally flushed cocks.  Bucky grinds down, flesh on flesh, and Steve _arches_ off the bed groaning loud enough for someone to hear through the thin walls of the motel.  He doesn’t try to switch their positions, as bad as Steve wanted to turn them around and rut between Bucky’s spread legs he doesn’t.  Giving Bucky control felt like something Bucky needed and then there was the knife next to his head like a reminder of everything Bucky was now.  Deadly, gorgeous, lethal, and beautiful. 

A metal hand snakes around both of their leaking cocks, rubbing them together; it shouldn’t have been as hot as it was.  Fuck, did he have a thing for metal arms now?  Metal fingers slick with precome moved between them easily and the answer to his question was a resounding yes.

“Bucky, I’m not gonna last—”  Steve says in a rush, he felt his blush burning the tips of his ears and down his chest.  To that Bucky quickens his pace alternating between rolling his hips and messily jerking their cocks off together.  It takes all of five seconds for Steve to come with Bucky only a few beats behind him.  Steve would never forget the sight or the long low moan Bucky makes, the way his long eyelashes flutter.  The pink flush high on Bucky’s cheeks make his eyes more blue than grey, Steve notices dreamily when Bucky looks at him again.  Come gets on their clothes which seems to amuse Bucky because he smirks lazily and leans in to lick along Steve’s exposed throat.

“I love you, I love you,”  Steve says between postcoital kisses.

Bucky doesn’t say much of anything.  Steve asks him to stay the night and he does.  They don’t do anything else the rest of the night, Steve’s afraid to rush things and enjoying Bucky sleepy snuggled up next to him in bed.  For the first time in years Steve sleeps peacefully.  No nightmares, just bliss. He wakes up refreshed with the sun seeping through the blinds.  Bucky’s gone without a trace.  A ghost of a dream.

The warm feeling stalls but doesn’t fade completely.  Hope takes ahold of his heart and Steve goes back to sleep.

The next time Steve is within a few feet of Bucky again, months later, he asks, “Buck, do you remember me?”

A tightness binds Steve’s chest remembering the parking lot all that time prior.  Bucky gives him a little smile despite looking exhausted and trapped. 

“Your mom’s name was Sarah.”

Steve can’t breathe.

“You used wear newspapers in your shoes.”

Steve makes a silent promise.  The world couldn’t have Bucky Barnes, it would have to go through Captain America first.  It didn’t matter what Bucky did or didn’t do, Steve was going to fight for him.  Bucky was going to stay with him this time.  He was going to make sure of it.

Bucky had saved his life over and over again, it was long past time Steve returned the favor.

 

 

 

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Short and bitter...just like me.


End file.
